


The Snake Queen

by KidA_666



Series: Desires and Dreams and Powers [2]
Category: Three Dark Crowns Series - Kendare Blake
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, F/M, M/M, Naturalist Katharine, Poisoner Arsinoe, Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-02-28 05:13:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13264434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KidA_666/pseuds/KidA_666
Summary: "Katharine wonders what they say about her outside of the confines of Wolf Spring.  She imagines that it is something like, 'Gifted, surely ― but tiny, with no familiar to speak of.'  No one has expected a naturalist queen to win since the time of Bernadine and the Queens of Old.  The poisoners are too cunning; the elementals too volatile; and the naturalists’ familiars never quite fierce enough."





	1. Youth

_I am weary of days and hours,_

_Blown buds of barren flowers,_

_Desires and dreams and powers_

_And everything but sleep._

-Algernon Charles Swinburne, “The Garden of Proserpine”

\--

The wind is blowing in off of the sea, smelling of fish and salt.  It stings the skin.  A gull, searching for a roost in the dying light of day, caws from somewhere overhead.  Floating in the harbor are the fishing boats of Wolf Spring, bearing a collective cargo of ― according to Grandad Ellis ― exactly three hundred paper lanterns.  And there is grain dotting the surface, meant to feed the fish.    

Little Queen Katharine stands at the water’s edge, holding a wreath.  

It is Midsummer, her first High Festival since coming to Wolf Spring.  The first High Festival in her memory, although she is certain that they were celebrated at the Black Cottage as well.  Perhaps those were the rare days on which old Willa made honey cakes and allowed them to splash about in the creek until well past sundown.  Already, it is hard for her to remember.  

The wreath in her hands is fit for a naturalist queen ― cornflowers and violets and marigolds, all twisted through with ivy.  It is breathtaking, each flower vibrant like nothing she has ever seen; it will be a shame to set it adrift.  When the priestesses presented it to her, Katharine had thought to wear it as a crown.  It was Juillenne who corrected her: “That’s for your lantern, silly.”  

It was not quite a scolding; but she could hear the sneer in Juillenne’s voice.  She thinks Katharine too tiny, and perhaps a bit stupid.  And she is not half so sweet as her Aunt Caragh, who braided daisies into Katharine’s hair this evening.  

The daisies remind her of something, although the queen is not sure what.

When she stoops to place her wreath in the water, the people cheer.  Katharine is their queen, no matter how small.  No matter how her hands shake with nerves at such a simple task as this.  No matter how Juillenne would laugh at her, were she close enough to see.  She watches as the lantern bobs, along with the tide and out to sea, until it is joined by the others, and her little wreath is swallowed whole.  

\--

Afterwards, there is a feast in the square.  Katharine is allowed to preside over the table as she pleases, but she is not expected to stay put.  Ellis encourages her to scamper about with Juillenne and her constant companion, the youngest Sandrin boy.  When she balks, Caragh squeezes the little queen’s bony shoulder and tells her to get a bit of dirt on her dress, at least.    

It is just as well that she does not stay at the table.  Already, Cait jokes that Katharine eats like a bird ― far too little.  She does not want to be on display, a fragile little sparrow queen picking at her food.  

She finds Juillenne sitting cross-legged on the dock, calling the fish so that they swim in dazed circles.  It almost makes the queen giggle; then, Juillenne fixes her with those two-colored eyes, and she bites the sound back.  

“Where is Joseph?” Katharine asks, when it is obvious that Juillenne will not be the first to speak.  How typical.    

“Fetching some sweets,” Juillenne replies, her attention already turned back to the fish.  Katharine does not like to be watched; but it is almost worse with the youngest Milone, who will not even bother to meet her eyes.  She acts as though Katharine bores her.  As though every other girl in Wolf Spring does not wish to be the foster sister of a queen.  “I imagine he’ll bring plenty.”

It is the closest that Katharine will get to an invitation.  She lowers herself to the dock, attempting to mimic the other girl’s relaxed slouch.  It is her sisters who must be dignified and stiff; but the more informal Katharine is, the more the naturalists will love her.  Caragh told her so.

“Did you eat?” Juillenne asks.  Her fish move in lazy figure eights.

Katharine licks her lips, tasting the salt that lingers there ― a fried clam and a handful of fingerling potatoes.  She was too nervous for much else.  “A bit.”

Juillenne huffs.  “If you starve yourself to death, you will not live to become queen.”

Katharine resists the urge to say something shrill ― _I am already a queen.  A daughter of the Goddess._ Juillenne would mock her for it.  And both of them know that there is only one chosen queen in each cycle; already, the people do not seem confident that it is Katharine.  

The Ascension is some ten years away.  Katharine does not even know what it entails, except that she will be able to see her sisters again.  And yet, Cait heaps her plates high and tells the queen that she is far too skinny.  Juillenne and Joseph hide around the corners to frighten her, then tell her that she is too meek to fight.  It hardly seems fair for the Milones to judge her so harshly after little more than a month.  

Katharine squares her shoulders.  “Perhaps I will eat your share of the sweets, when Joseph comes.  That will fatten me right up.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”  Juillenne narrows her funny eyes; for the first time, Katharine does not avert her gaze.  “Grandad made the pumpkin cake himself.  Ripened them early.  He spent weeks getting it just right.”

Katharine grins.  She has the haziest memory of another pumpkin cake, smeared with spiced icing and served hot beside a fire, eaten with her hands.  “I will be certain to try it.”  

\--

Juillenne and Joseph are fond of rough games, all racing through the woods and sword fights with sticks that only end when someone takes a tumble into the lake.  After Midsummer, Katharine falls in with them as a tagalong; she is usually the fair maiden, held captive by an evil mainlander queen.  Juillenne and Joseph are always meant to rescue her in tandem, but they quarrel over who will untie the queen’s wrists ― bound with rope pilfered from the Sandrins’ fishing skiff ― until it becomes a competition.  Whoever prevails is rewarded with a clam from Madge’s stand, and Katharine’s proclamations of undying gratitude.    

Secretly, she prefers to be rescued by Juillenne, who is much gentler in tugging off the ropes.

\--

The next High Festival is held beneath the waxy yellow light of the Reaping Moon.  Unlike Midsummer, it is an Elemental affair, marked by bonfires blazing ten feet high to combat the wind that whips in from the coast to make the island truly cold; but the people of Wolf Spring will take any excuse to drink mulled wine and feast in the square.  And it will be special, this year, with everyone still vying for a glimpse of the new queen.  

As the sun dips and the town prepares for the feast, the pleasant daytime breezes turn chilly.  Caragh frets over the dropping temperature all evening, until Cait finally insists upon bundling the girls into scarves and thick sweaters of black wool.  

“It is because you are so small,” Juillenne says, even as her teeth chatter.  She tugs at her sweater, which had to be forced over her head as she yowled at its itchiness.  “They are afraid you will catch your death.”    

If the air were not so cold and her scarf so warm, Katharine would raise her chin in defiance.  “I’ll stay close to the fires.”  

Katharine presses into Juillenne’s side, her breath coming in clouds.  Before they left, Grandad Ellis had offered her his good corduroy jacket, but she had declined so that they would not think her weak.  She regrets that show of bravado, now, staring down the long path between her boot-clad feet and the fires in the square.  It will be good to get a cup of cider in her belly and snuggle into Aunt Caragh, who will not mock her for shivering.  

Juillenne scoffs.  “You will do no such thing.  All of the fun happens in the dark.”  

The fun that Juillenne speaks of involves taunting the dog familiars with scraps, tossing pebbles at the lovers who sneak off to the shadows to kiss, and stealing an entire rhubarb pie.  And although Queen Katharine shivers, she would not want to be anywhere else.  

Eventually, they cease their pebble-throwing in favor of huddling beneath the trees and eating pie.  Joseph and Juillenne save Katharine the largest slice, determined to fatten her up so that next summer, they will be able to wrestle the queen without fear of snapping her in half.

“What do you think your sisters are doing?” Juillenne asks.  

They do not mention Katharine’s sisters much, except to mock them.  Juillenne says she remembers Arsinoe, nose scrunched up in defiance as one of the Arrons collecting her corrected the poisoner queen’s posture, and can mimic the face perfectly.  Katharine envies her the memory; in their months of separation, her sisters’ faces have become almost impossible to recall.  Even in her dreams they are blurry, little more than floating orbs with black hair and eyes.

“I suppose Mirabella is jumping through bonfires.”  Katharine pauses, chewing her lip.  It is not the biting sarcasm that Juillenne and Joseph want to hear; but what she does remember of Mirabella is her gift.  So early.  So strong.  And certainly nothing to scoff at.  She tries again.  “Arsinoe has probably been tucked into bed already.  Poisoners do not know how to have fun.”     

Joseph spits, a habit he learned from his seafaring father and brothers.  “I imagine ruling the island with an iron fist is a fair bit of fun.”  Katharine suspects that the political talk is something else Joseph has picked up from his father, although she is not bold enough to say so.

Juillenne is bold.  She swats Joseph’s arm.  “Do not ruin the night by being cross.  You sound like your father, chatting with Grandad after two pints too many.”  She eyes Katharine, who is still picking at her piece of pie.  Katharine knows that she would like to take it, could probably finish it in two big bites; but it is not done, stealing food from the mouth of a queen.  Especially not one as skinny as her.  “It will be different, soon.  When Katharine is crowned, we will have a say.”

That is the rhetoric of Grandad Ellis and Aunt Caragh, spoken with shining eyes after two pints too many.  She is still so young; but that is what makes them bold enough to hope.  It makes it easier to pretend that she will grow up big and strong, with a lion for a familiar and iron for a heart.  Until now, Katharine did not think that Juillenne believed it.

“And you will both be on my Council,” she declares, spearing a bit of pie, just enough to make Juillenne relax.  She thinks of the youngest Milone with her stick-sword, protecting her queen from Olive Anderson during a game of knights and dragons.  “Or leading my guard.”

Joseph nods.  Young as he is, Joseph is still a Sandrin boy ― and they are far too handsome to be serious for long.  He lifts his cup of cider in a toast.  “Long live Queen Katharine, then.”  Juillenne joins him, mismatched eyes sparkling with mischief.  It is not as though they believe it.  The Ascension and the Council are part of a world that exists ten years away; their quiet, knobby-kneed Katharine is a queen in name only.  This is just another game of make-believe.  

\--

As the island grows colder, Joseph’s father begins stealing him away to work on the fishing skiff.  Soon, the biggest ones will start swimming away from the island and into the warmer waters of the Mainland.  Grandad Ellis calls it their winter holiday.  

In Joseph’s absence, Juillenne takes Katharine to the forest.  At first, she thinks that they are there to spy on the Sandrins’ skiff from the treetops, or check Grandma Cait’s rabbit snares; but Juillenne stops far too early for either of those things, in the clearing where they used to play knights and dragons.  One side is open to the cliffs, overlooking the sea; so perhaps they have come to spy on Joseph after all.  Without the trees to stop it, frigid wind blows in from the coast and raises gooseflesh on their skin.

“We must start practicing,” Juillenne says, while Katharine shivers, “for when your gift comes.”  Without warning, Juillenne plucks the hard bud of what might have been a pansy from the ground.  “Now, take this flower.  Picture what it would look like in full bloom.”

“It will never bloom now,” Katharine whines.  “You’ve killed it.”

Juillenne rolls her eyes.  “We are naturalists.  It will bloom if we tell it to.  Now take the flower.”

And so it goes, for hours.  Katharine trails behind as Juillenne plucks late flowers from their stalks and places them in the little queen’s cupped hands.  Each time, Katharine squints at the bud hard enough to raise beads of sweat on her brow; and each time, the flower does not so much as twitch in her hands until Juillenne intervenes.    

They carry on like that for two weeks ― the queen sweating and her teacher sighing ―  before Katharine blooms a sweet pea stalk.  

It happens while she and Juillenne are relaxing in the high grass, sharing apples and a wedge of hard cheese.  She does not even mean to do it.  The queen had only thought how pretty the flowers might be once they opened their dusky petals fully to the sky; and then, before her eyes, they did just that.              

Katharine is so happy that she could weep.  With every trip into town, Aunt Caragh brings back news of Mirabella’s bursts of flame and the way that Arsinoe can gobble up belladonna berries like caramels.  Each time, the Milones look at Katharine more apprehensively than before.  Lillian, the last queen they fostered, had shown an early gift.  She was the firstborn, and came from the Black Cottage capable of ripening whole apple trees; by her ninth birthday, she had called a familiar.  And still, it was not enough to win out against the poisoners.

Although a sweet pea stalk is not an apple tree, it is certainly a start.  Katharine may be the youngest and smallest of the triplet queens; but now that her gift has come, the people can no longer say that she is the weakest.

\--

It is nearly winter when Juillenne tells Katharine to call her Jules.     

They are sitting in the orchard, where the trees sparkle with early frost, so that Jules might teach the queen how to ripen the last of the young, hard apples that cling to their branches.  Her gift is still so fresh that every act is a wonder, and she gasps at the reddening of the flesh, the fruit coming alive in her cupped hands.  Katharine has never seen something so lovely.

“Juillenne,” Katharine whispers.  Her voice has gone low, reverent and astonished.  “I cannot believe I did that.”

“You are the only one who calls me Juillenne.”  The other girl wrinkles her nose in distaste, not bothering to praise Katharine’s apple.  Even though her gift seems to be showing early, the Milones are still nigh-impossible to impress.  They are naturalist royalty in their own right, led by strong women with stronger gifts; women who are not quick to put their faith in little queens.  

Juillenne prattles on, “Besides Grandma Cait, when she is giving me a tongue-lashing.”    

Katharine cannot help but laugh.  Juillenne--Jules--is so effortless, able to banter with the adults as the queen gapes in silence.  If Katharine carries on inclining her head and smiling without showing her teeth through every interaction, the townspeople will begin to think her dumb.

“ _Jules_ ,” Katharine ventures, “I cannot believe I did that.  Is that better?”

Jules nods emphatically, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.  “Much better, Kat.”  

\--

Jules’s mother returns the week before their seventh birthday.  Up until now, Madrigal Milone has been the stuff of bedtime stories told by Aunt Caragh ― cautionary tales, for the most part: “Do not ever run off to the mainland, girls.  You will live to regret it.  Did you know that there are no gifts on the mainland?  Only low magic.”

They shuddered at that.  Low magic is twisted, all charms and curses that the devout call sideways prayers.  No one on the island would dare to dabble in such things.  It is almost blasphemous to even discuss it.      

Before Madrigal sent word that she was coming back, Katharine had always held the secret suspicion that Caragh was Jules’s real mother.  She certainly acted the part, fretting over Jules’s every tangled hair and scraped knee.  And Jules certainly loved her enough, dropping her pretense of toughness and snuggling into Caragh’s side whenever she was feeling pouty or sick.  It would be odd to see Caragh’s role usurped by her younger sister, a virtual stranger in mainland clothes.    

There are times when Katharine would quite like to have a mother of her own.  Not her queen mother, Camille ― to Katharine, she is hardly more than a story, and a dark one at that.  All that the Milones have ever told her about Camille is the tale of how she snuck into Wolf Spring as the city slept and poisoned Queen Lillian in her bed.  What Katharine longs for is someone warm and solid as Aunt Caragh, who could braid her hair on festival days and kiss her when she bloomed her first rose.  It hardly seems fair that now, Jules will have two mothers where Katharine has none.    

When the sun rises on the morning that Madrigal is set to return, Katharine and Jules race to the dock.  Most of Wolf Spring is still snug in bed; but Jules had tossed for hours, kicking her quilts onto the floor and keeping Katharine wide awake.  Cait and Ellis will join them soon, and Aunt Caragh.  And at the first sign of a ship breaking through the mist, the whole town will crowd the dock, eager for a glimpse of Cait Milone’s prodigal daughter.

“Madge told me she is very beautiful; but since she’s your mother, I expect she’d have to be,” Katharine says.  It is something that she imagines the Sandrin boys would say to make a fisher-woman’s pretty daughter blush.  Jules just scowls.  Flattery does not do for her what it does for the queen, who titters at the vaguest compliment.

“I still do not see why she has to come back,” Jules snarls.  “It’s going to ruin everything.”  

“Change, maybe,” Katharine corrects, “but not ruin.  We will still do everything just as before.”

Jules’s teeth are chattering; in her haste to get to the dock, she left behind her gloves and cap.  Katharine catches one of her freezing hands, gives it a squeeze.  Immediately, Jules goes to yank her hand away; but Jules and Joseph’s insistence that she eat has made the queen stronger.  Katharine tightens her grip.

They stay like that, fingers linked and eyes staring straight ahead, as people gather on the dock.  Some pause to bid the girls good morning; the superstitious few incline their heads toward Katharine out of respect; but all push past them eventually, fighting for the best view.  By the time a Mainland boat breaks through the mist, half of Wolf Spring has gathered on the dock.       

Madrigal Milone sweeps down the gangway in a swirl of red fabric and chestnut curls, the loveliest woman Katharine has ever seen.  Behind her, men in Mainland clothes deposit her trunks on the dock, scurrying as if they are afraid that the island will trap them if they do not depart soon.  Madrigal thanks them with a wave of her hand and a slip of colored paper apiece ― Katharine hears someone hiss that it is Mainlander currency.

Madrigal embraces her parents and spares a cursory glance for Caragh before asking, loudly enough for the whole chattering crowd to hear, “Where is my little Juillenne?”  

The crowd parts easily, forcing Jules forward with the same enthusiasm that had made them shove past her earlier in the day.  Katharine fights to keep hold of her hand, only relenting when she feels as though her arm will be wrenched from its socket for her efforts.  She hangs back, a queen craning her neck alongside the gossips.

Madrigal makes her way towards Jules slowly, her painted pink lips in a perfect _o_ , as if she cannot believe that her daughter is not still a babe-in-arms.  As if she had left Jules suspended in time like something out of a fairy story, awaiting her mother’s return.  And when she crushes Jules to her chest, it is done with a flourish and a great deal of weeping, as though Madrigal is returning from a long exile instead of a voluntary holiday.  

Katharine searches the crowd for Cait and Ellis, mildly horrified by the prospect that they may be crying, too.  She is flooded with relief to see that Cait remains straight-backed and expressionless, while Ellis is preoccupied with the trunks.  Aunt Caragh, who the queen has never known to say a harsh word about anyone, is leaning into Matthew Sandrin’s side with her mouth   set in a hard line that is very nearly a frown.  

\--

Queen Katharine has always wanted a mother; but it does not take long for her to realize that no girl would want a mother like Madrigal Milone.

She first thought this when, at her first supper, Madrigal regarded Jules with a pout and said, “She doesn’t look much like me, does she?  Papa, in your letters you said that she looked like me.”  

Cait and Ellis ― never tolerant of whining ― dismissed Madrigal’s complaint with rolled eyes.  It was Aunt Caragh who snapped, “We’d all forgotten what you looked like, Maddie.”

Already, Caragh had looked on Madrigal’s red dress with disapproval ― _mourning colors, do not tell me she has forgotten that_ , Katharine heard her say.  Then there was the matter of cooking, which Madrigal refused to have anything to do with; she would not so much as peel a carrot, and even Katharine could do that.  Jules and Caragh peeled with gusto after that, scowling at their tasks, and Madrigal’s turned back, and sometimes at each other.  The queen mostly kept to herself, tucked into a corner so that she wasn’t underfoot.  

“I’m hurt,” Madrigal said, pouting prettily.  “I could never forgot your face, Caragh.”    

In bed that night, Jules tells Katharine of the insult hidden in those words.  “She was saying that Caragh is plain ― like me.”  

Katharine huffs.  Something is surging up from the pit of her belly, warming her cheeks.  For once, she is thankful that their bedroom is so dark.  “If you are plain, then what am I?”    

“A queen,” Jules grumbles.  For a moment, Katharine almost thinks that there is envy in her voice.

“Queens are plain, Jules.  We are all black, black black.  You have color.”  Katharine rolls to the edge of the mattress, facing Jules.  If she were beside her, the queen would tap each of her temples, indicating the blue eye and the green ― both glinting in the dark like a cat’s.  “More color than me or Aunt Caragh.  And certainly more than Madrigal.”

Jules tuts at that, disapproving.  “You sound like Matthew Sandrin.”  

But there is a smile in her voice that was not there before; and Katharine falls asleep with her face still flushed.

\--

At Queen Katharine’s seventh birthday celebration, there are three tents full-up with food, eight huge sprays of flowers, and one tapestry.  

“She looks like you,” Joseph says, barely intelligible around a mouthful of buttered crab.  He nods towards the tapestry, where a young woman stands, stone-faced, beneath an apple tree: Bernadine, the island’s last great naturalist queen.  Its only great naturalist queen, if the stories are to be believed.  “I suppose all queens look like you, don’t they?”

But Katharine is too preoccupied to answer him, because there is another woman in the tapestry that looks like her, too.  The woman is black-haired; black-eyed; and she is not standing, but sprawling at Queen Bernadine’s feet.  Sprawling in a pool of blood.      

“Who is that other woman?” she asks.  When Jules and Joseph do not answer her ― only gape, open-mouthed, as if they have been caught sneaking sweets before supper ― she searches the crowd for the nearest Milone.  Her pulse is hammering behind her eyes.  The crab, so delicious a moment ago, roils in the queen’s stomach.  All that blood, on the woman’s dress and in her hair, and on the muzzle of that great, gray wolf.  

Finally, she spots Madrigal and Caragh, locked in a three-way staring match with a member of the Black Council ― Lucian Marlowe, Katharine was told this morning, when he would not so much as shake her hand.  Now, as he spots the little queen marching over, he excuses himself from the tent.  

“Aunt Caragh,” Katharine says, tugging insistently at her sleeve.  “Who is that woman?”  

At first, Caragh chuckles.  “Lucian Marlowe is no woman, Kat.  Although his hair is longer than mine.”  But when she sees the look on Katharine’s face, pinched and near tears, she stops short.  “Who are you talking about, sweetheart?”

“The woman on the wall.”

“Queen Bernadine,” Caragh says, just as Madrigal opens her mouth to chirp, “Which woman?”

“The other one,” the queen says, voice shaking.   _The dead one_ , she wants to scream.   _Why does she look just like me?_

Caragh’s arm darts out, quick as a snake, to grip her sister’s wrist in warning; but Madrigal’s tongue wags quicker.  “Queen Bernadine’s sister.  An oracle, if my memory serves.”

“What happened to her?”  

“She was beaten,” Madrigal says, so nonchalant that she may as well be discussing the weather.  “That is why Queen Bernadine is honored at every naturalist festival, and we do not even know her sister’s names.  That is what happens to queens who lose.”

“Will that happen to me?”  Katherine’s big eyes are very wide, now, and shining with tears.  They cling to her lashes like dew drops.  She sways, blood rushing to her head ― _blood, all that blood and a face so like her own_ …   

Caragh takes hold of her arm.  “Of course not, Kat.  We will never let anything happen to you,” she says, and there is fire in her voice.  Her jaw is set, her grip on the little queen’s arm fierce.  She will not so much as glance at Madrigal.      

Eventually, Katharine allows herself to be steered towards the tent flap.  Perhaps the cool air, out from under Queen Bernadine’s unforgiving gaze, will calm her.  Jules and Joseph are waiting just outside, wearing twin frowns of guilt.  When Caragh sees them, she snaps, “You look like a pair of sheep-killing dogs.  Take Kat to the dessert tent, since you’re so keen on running off.”

In the dessert tent, Jules and Joseph pile a plate high with strawberry cake, blackberry cobbler, and pear tart.  They offer every bit of it to Katharine.  

The queen shakes her head.  She knows that they only mean to keep her mouth full so she cannot ask questions.  Turning to Jules, she asks, “Is that what I’m meant to do?  To be?  Is that why you said I had to train?”  Katharine has heard stories from Grandad Ellis about the competition and crowning of queens.  How the Goddess sent only one Chosen Queen in each cycle, the other two to be defeated.  She feels foolish, now, for not knowing what that meant.  Foolish and ill.  She fights to keep her voice from shaking as she says, “Tell me the truth, Jules.”

Jules takes her arm, mismatched eyes downcast, and that is answer enough.

\--

By the time she is nine years old, Queen Katharine is able to stand beside Grandad Ellis and Caragh to ripen an apple tree; at age ten, she can command a small flock of starlings with Jules’s help; at eleven, she begins to call for her familiar in earnest.

“It will need to be something big,” Joseph says, “with very sharp teeth.”  He clicks his own together for effect, before lapsing back into an easy smile without any gaps or baby teeth.      

The three of them are sitting in a clearing, sharing a loaf of day-old bread and a wheel of cheese.  Joseph has spent the last six months in a growth spurt, so that he towers over the two of them, now, and uses it as an excuse to eat twice his share.  Katharine is finally catching up to Jules, in height if not in power ― that is enough, for now, to make her happy.

“All the better to eat them with,” Jules snarls, the way that Aunt Caragh would when telling them the story of the foolish Mainland girl and the wolf.  

Katharine forces a laugh.  “If they do not eat me up first, you mean.”  

Or incinerate her, or poison her throat shut, or stab her through the heart.  Talk of her fierce sisters has crept into every corner of the island by now, so that Aunt Caragh can no longer shelter her from it: Arsinoe with her poisoner’s appetite, Mirabella with her lightning.  Katharine wonders what they say about her outside of the confines of Wolf Spring.  She imagines that it is something like, “Gifted, surely ― but tiny, with no familiar to speak of.”  No one has expected a naturalist queen to win since the time of Bernadine and the Queens of Old.  The poisoners are too cunning; the elementals too volatile; and the naturalists’ familiars never quite fierce enough.  

Jules takes her hand, squeezing protectively.  “They will never even get close enough to try.”  Something flutters in Katharine’s stomach.  That feeling is new to her, too, like Joseph’s long legs and straight teeth; but the queen is learning to like it.

“My protector,” Katharine drawls.  She had said it genuinely not so long ago, when they were smaller and playing knights and dragons.  Jules would brandish her stick-sword and shout the whole village away while Katharine watched, awestruck.  

Joseph rolls his eyes.  He has always been much better as a dragon than a knight, and is forever bitter for it.  “Don’t you ever wish that there was a way to…” he starts, faltering as he looks to Jules for approval.  She cuts him off with an elbow to the ribs.  

“A way to what?” Katharine asks, dropping Jules’s hand.  

“To escape all this,” Joseph blurts, jumping out of Jules’s reach.  “Jules and I were talking about it just the other day.  About giving you another option.”  He casts his eyes about, seemingly afraid that the Goddess will overhear.  “Katharine, if you could leave the island…would you?”  

“I am the island,” Katharine replies, unthinking.  The words of the temple come to mind: _A queen is both of the island and for it.  Its daughter; its protector; its lifeblood._ “How could I leave?”

“In my mother’s boat,” Joseph scoffs.  “How else?”

\--

In the balmy morning following the Midsummer festival, when every adult in Wolf Spring is still drunk in their bed, Queen Katharine wakes before sunrise, boards the Sandrins’ daysailer with a knapsack full of clothes, and pushes away from the island for the first time in her eleven years.

“The mist will be the tricky bit,” Joseph says, standing at the prow of the boat and studying a compass like a true sailor.  

Jules leans against Katharine’s shoulder, whispering, “I’ve heard Madrigal say she saw land as soon as she came out the other side.  So close that you wouldn’t believe.”  Katharine offers a tight-lipped smile in response.  Perhaps if she keeps quiet, the Goddess will not know that one of her own means to escape.  “There’s a life waiting for us out there, Kat.  A real life.”  

Since that day in the tent, gaping at the bloody mural of Queen Bernadine, Katharine has been steeped in death.  She cannot begin to imagine what a real life will be like, without the constant threat of her sisters looming overhead like an executioner’s blade; but she knows that it will be grand with Jules and Joseph at her side, in a land where her black hair and eyes are not a target on her back.

It will be grand, if it happens at all.  If the Goddess will allow it.

The three of them row on in silence, watching the mist warily.  It seems to be advancing on their little boat with unhinged jaws.  The jaws of the Goddess, unforgiving and impossibly large.  Hungry.  “Brace yourselves,” Joseph calls, just as the water begins to roar and slosh onto the deck.

And then it is upon them, suffocating and cold.  When the mist swallows the daysailer up, Katharine clings to Jules.  The waves continue to rise, whispering against the sides of the boat ― mocking.

_Land, so close that you wouldn’t believe._

Jules shakes her off.  They are going to have to fight it.

_There’s a life waiting for us out there._

The queen straightens her back, composes herself.  She fumbles for an oar.

_A real life._

The life that Katharine truly wants, with Jules at her side.  A life in a house like Cait and Ellis’s, with apple trees and rose bushes and Joseph forever tripping up the walk, uninvited but welcome.  That life would make her eleven years on the island seem like a bad dream.

The mist is almost opaque now, clutching the boat with icy fingers.  Joseph adjusts the sails, tugging desperately against a sudden gale; Katharine can just make out Jules, gritting her teeth and paddling fruitlessly against the tide.  Her own oar strikes the water and nearly breaks with the force of the wave that meets it.

For those who are able to pass through, there is a life beyond the mist; but Katharine will not see it.  No queen ever has.

\--

Queen Katharine is the only one who does not come to Indrid Down in shackles, although she suspects that the Black Council would like to do far worse to her, if they could.  Katharine is lucky that the Goddess will not let a queen be poisoned to death by anyone other than her sisters.  It strikes her as funny that She would choose now to protect her, after nearly drowning her in the mist.  

Their families are waiting for them inside the Volroy’s innermost chamber.  Annie Sandrin barrels past the guards and straight to Joseph, tears staining her cheeks.  There are no desperate embraces for Jules and Katharine, although Grandad Ellis does squeeze each of their shoulders.  Cait, straight-backed and serious before the Black Council, will not even do that.  

When Natalia Arron’s heels can be heard clicking against the Volroy’s black marble floors, the three children are wrenched forward and forced to kneel on a thin red rug.  Katharine is pushed down so apruptly that she nearly topples forward, and Jules strains against her shackles like a dog on a chain.

Cait stands a head shorter than Natalia, but a foot broader and at least three decades older.  From the beginning, it is clear that she will not beg.  “They are children,” she says evenly.  “Foolish, impulsive children.  You were one, not so long ago.”  Something in Natalia Arron’s eyes ― a cold, flat blue like the ice on Dogwood Pond ― flashes at that.  A lesser woman would have flinched.  Cait smiles.  “Nothing they have done was done out of malice.  Our children love the little queen, Natalia.  They cannot help it.”

Natalia grimaces, and Katharine begins to doubt the stories she has heard of the Arrons’ unflappable matriarch.  Cait is able to poke holes in her cool facade with a single, honest sentence.

“Love does not excuse treason,” Natalia snaps.  “That is what this is, Cait.  Treason, if not outright blasphemy against the Goddess and the sacred way of the island.  Surely even you cannot abide by that.”

Cait sets her jaw and steps back.  She will not stoop to squabbling, either.

Joseph’s mother is less composed.  When the guards release her she begs, and sobs, and wrings her hands.  It is only Caragh’s grip on her arm that keeps her from prostrating herself at Natalia’s feet.

A woman at Natalia Arron’s side, with the same silvery hair and strange purple eyes, interrupts the pleading with a shrill, “There must be punishment!  This is no petty offense!”  She seems to be addressing Natalia, although her eyes never leave the Sandrins, who are staring with their mouths agape.  

“Genevieve!”  Natalia has regained control of herself by now, if not of her Council members.  The other woman ― Genevieve ― flinches.  “Would you like to be dismissed?  Are there more important matters for you to attend to?  More important than one of our own queens?”  She turns to Katharine, then, with a closed-mouth smile that turns the queen’s blood cold.  “Would you speak, Queen Katharine?”

It has been days since she spoke properly to anyone, beyond crying out for Jules as the fishermen dragged them out of the mist and frightened whispers in the back of a darkened carriage.  Her throat is scraped raw with screaming and salt water.  Katharine looks, instinctively, to Jules.

Her Jules; her Joseph, too.  Cait was right to say that they did this out of love for her.  But the Council does not care for any more talk of love.  Only a queen’s words can keep them from poisoning her friends where they kneel.  Even as she rises to speak, Katharine is not sure that it will be enough.

“I made them do it,” Katharine says, her voice coming so quietly that the black-cloaked Council members lean forward just to hear it.  She tries again.  “I forced them to take me.  It was my plan.  I was only using them to…”  She pauses, wracked by coughing as if her own body would protest the lie.  “To navigate.”

Katharine drops back to the rug, ignoring Jules’s furious fidgeting beside her.  Joseph is frozen in disbelief, his wind-burned face very pale.  

“So they did not kidnap you in the early hours of the morning, intent on spiriting you away from the island?”  Natalia Arron’s eyes have narrowed to slits.  Katharine nods fervently.  “They were only following the orders of a queen?”  She nods again, over and over.  It occurs to her that the Council of poisoners may question her for hours, just to see the naturalist queen squirm.

“Very well then.”  Natalia does not turn to consult her Council, or look to the naturalist families waiting anxiously at the back of the room.  Her gaze never leaves Katharine.  “Juillenne Milone and Joseph Sandrin will not die.”  There is a collective gasp of relief from the back of the room.  “Joseph Sandrin will be exiled to the Mainland until he comes of age.”  Where there were gasps, there is now sobbing.  Joseph’s mother wails.  “And Juillenne Milone will be sent to the Black Cottage.  The best penance of all is service to the Goddess.”

It is Caragh that wails, then, and breaks through the line of guards.  “No!”  Her back is straight as ever; but her hands are clasped before her, pleading.  Katharine gasps, realization dawning just as Caragh says, “Send me instead.  She’s only a child, Natalia.”  Natalia Arron stands unblinking.  Unmoved.  She would have Aunt Caragh ― good, strong, warm Caragh ― fall to her knees and plead like a prisoner.  “Surely the poisoners are not so wicked as this.  To deprive a queen of her only companion, and a family of their only daughter.”

“Very well.  Caragh Milone will be sentenced to the Black Cottage in her niece’s place, as penance for treason.”

It is impossible to tell if it is Katharine or Jules who screams first.

\--

The first Reaping Moon without Joseph and Caragh dawns gray and bitter cold.  Jules and Katharine wrap themselves in coats and scarfs, only lifting their heads to glance nervously over their shoulders.  Katharine knows that Jules is doing it, too ― expecting to hear Aunt Caragh shuffle in, clucking her tongue and insisting on another layer.  The whole Milone house is haunted by the ghost of her rustling skirts and Joseph’s boisterous laugh, so that its remaining occupants can never rest.  

Katharine and Jules silently agree to keep to the high table, too old and too sad to join in the other’s mischief.  Joseph had set his sights on sneaking off with a girl this year, and was in the process of convincing Olive Anderson to do so before he was banished.  Katharine and Jules would have partaken in the pebble-throwing, then, if only to spoil it for him.  They would have laughed as Joseph shook his fists and cursed at them for interrupting, until his scowl split again into a lopsided Sandrin smile.

But Joseph is on the Mainland, now, and Olive Anderson only glares at Katharine as she stomps past.  Or perhaps she is glaring at Katharine’s wrist, and the brightly-colored little coral snake curled about it like a bracelet.

Before the long, sad journey home from Indrid Down, Madrigal had insisted on stopping in one of the curious poisoner shops that lined the city’s streets like a barrier wall.  “The girls are starved,” she had said ― as if Joseph were already forgotten and not just a few dozen steps behind them, clinging to his mother ―  “and we could do with a distraction.”  

The shop was stifling hot even for summer, each wall hung with dozens of oil lamps.  It did not take long for them to see why: Beyond the cases of cakes and meat roasting on spits, there were rows and rows of glass terrariums.  And in each terrarium was either a clutch of eggs or a full-grown snake.  One, its scales striped yellow and red and black, spotted Katharine and hissed, making her jump.

“Do not be frightened.  She is only saying hello,” the old shopkeeper tutted.  Her own arms were decorated with tattoos of the reptiles, curling up from her wrists to disappear beneath her shirt sleeves.  “Paying her respects to the queen,” she added with a wink, passing Katharine a warm scone wrapped in purple wax paper.  

“What is she?” Katharine asked.  Although the shop smelled delicious, she did not feel much like eating, and Madrigal was still browsing as if they were simply there on an outing.  As if they were not lingering in her sister Arsinoe’s city, packed with poisoners more deadly than any snake.  The old shopkeeper’s voice was soothing, a grandmother’s voice.  Perhaps listening to her prattle would calm the queen’s nerves.

“A coral snake,” the shopkeeper replied, bustling towards the terrariums as if she meant to fish her out for Katharine to see.  The queen sighed in relief when the shopkeeper continued past it to fish out an egg instead.  “She laid this clutch almost two months ago.  They’ll hatch within the week, Goddess willing.”  She extended her hand, holding the egg out for Katharine to inspect.  Chuckling, she said,  “Hold it, if you’d like; or cast some naturalist blessing to bring it out faster.”

That was when it happened.  Every lamp in the shop seemed to extinguish, and Katharine’s vision shrunk to the size of a pinprick, so that the egg was all she could see.  In her hand, she was sure that she felt the little snake writhing in its shell, waiting to meet her.  Calling to her.  It set her blood buzzing.  

A familiar, at last.  

It was not long before Katharine’s euphoria ebbed, became horror.  A snake would not kill Arsinoe; it could not even do much to hurt Mirabella, unless it was able to slither up her skirts undetected come Beltane.  And if it bit her, the naturalist queen was done for before the Ascension Year began.

Olive Anderson was the first one to call her the Snake Queen.  Now, even the adults whisper it as she walks past, without Cait and Ellis there to stop them.  If Jules hears, she shakes her fists and spits, but the people do not fear her.  She is a strong girl from the strongest family in Wolf Spring; but that is all, for now, with no familiar at her side.  

But Katharine cannot help but love her little snake, no matter what people may say.  She hatched beneath a heat lamp almost as soon as they settled back in, and has not left the queen’s side since except to sleep.  Katharine named her “Sweetheart,” although Jules insists that a queen’s familiar deserves something more dignified.  It was as if the snake named herself as soon as she slithered out of her egg and into the world.  Katharine hopes that Jules will understand it soon, when her own familiar comes.  

Jules is leaning into her side now, warm and solid, whispering, “We ought to send the starlings after Olive Anderson.  Have them pluck her eyes out of her head to keep them from rolling.”  Katharine chuckles, relaxes.  This feisty, sour Jules is almost the one that Katharine remembers, before her mismatched eyes lost their defiant spark and went hollow with grief.  

“I would have her eyes intact,” Katharine replies, “long enough that she might see my coronation.  After that, you may do as you wish with them.”  

Jules laughs, but it is brief.  Cracked.  Wrong.  She pulls away from Katharine, back into the recesses of her chair.  Since Indrid Down, Jules will not hear a word spoken about the Ascension, even as a joke.  It is as if losing Joseph and Caragh made it all real, shattering the fragile innocence that had insulated them since Katharine came to Wolf Spring five years ago.  Sometimes, Katharine wakes to find Jules studying her from across the room, squinting against the dark.  She watches as if she is afraid that the queen will shrivel up and blow away before her eyes.

“There go the first pair,” Katharine says.  She does not attempt to lean into Jules ― whatever moment of brief, fire-warmed intimacy they had shared is gone.  “Nelly Pearson and George Gillespie, just over there.”  The queen gestures towards the edge of the square, where the fires are smaller, and Jules’s eyes follow.  

“Were it me,” Jules says, voice low, “I would go for the younger one ― Luke, I think.  The one with the rooster familiar.  I believe he is set to inherit the bookshop, if no suitable daughter comes of age.  The heir to an empire.”  

Then, Jules breaks into a laugh.  It is her real laugh, infectious and loud.  It is one that Katharine gladly echoes.

\--

Their first birthday without Joseph and Caragh passes in much the same way as the Reaping Moon.  Happiness comes in short bursts ― a snort of laughter in the dessert tent or at the visiting Paola Vende’s expense ― and flees just as quickly.  Every smile that Jules and Katharine share without Joseph beaming between them feels like a betrayal.  And they cannot enter the main tent without thinking of Caragh, her carved festival chair gathering dust in the Milones’ attic.

At Midsummer, Katharine presses a discreet kiss to the soft petals of her pansy and peony wreath before sending it off.  Some small, foolish part of her hopes that it will survive the harbor and the sea beyond to wash up on the shore of Joseph’s strange new homeland like a message in a bottle.  But the queen knows that the island will not allow it.  Her little wreath will be carried by the waves only until it reaches the mists, where the Goddess will swallow it whole.

Jules is waiting for her up the shore, grinning in the torchlight.  She will allow herself the occasional smile now, at least.  She looks almost proud.

“Remember that first festival, when you tried to wear the wreath on your head?” she asks, looping an arm around Katharine’s shoulder.  Jules’s arms are longer now, fingertips dangling so that Sweetheart could strike them from Katharine’s wrist.  They are lucky that the little snake loves Jules almost as much as she loves the queen.  She only butts her head against Jules’s palm like a kitten, wanting to be stroked.  

“Remember how cruel you were?” Katharine counters, although she is smiling.  “You called me a ninny and knocked it off.”

Jules was standoffish towards her for less than a fortnight.  Now she is the queen’s protector, still boisterously brave even if they are no longer small enough to play knights and dragons, where her bravery could be put to use.  It will be put to use soon enough, during the Ascension Year in less than four years’ time.  Far too soon for Katharine’s liking.

Jules chuckles.  “I never called you a ninny.  And if I did, it is only because I was trying to keep you from humiliating yourself.”

“Then that is the only time you ever kept me from it,” Katharine says.  “Some friend you are, Juillenne Milone.”  

Jules shoves her playfully, the queen still loosely tucked beneath her arm.  Katharine has seen other children their age starting to behave this way together ― Olive Anderson and Vincent Briggs, as of late, trading barbs while touching too much to be truly angry.  Madrigal calls it flirting, the very thought of which makes Katharine blush.  Jules would never flirt; and even if she did, Katharine would know it immediately.  She knows Jules as she would an extension of herself, more than a friend or even a foster sister could.

They breeze by the high table, picking up tartlets and fried oysters to be wrapped in napkins and stuffed into the deep pockets of Katharine’s light black dress.  She is not bent on wearing pants and vests, as Jules is; but she does insist on having pockets, if only as a place to keep crickets for Sweetheart.  Cait and Ellis incline their heads towards the girls as they pass, on their way to the dock where they have spent every Midsummer since Katharine first came to Wolf Spring.

They spend long, wordless minutes eating, only pausing to squeal when one of Sweetheart’s crickets finds its way into a napkin.  “I thought they were gone,” Katharine shrieks, apologetic even though she is biting back a laugh.  Jules had nearly popped the thing into her mouth.

Finally, when every crumb and cricket is gone, Jules looks to the queen and says, “It will be a year tomorrow.”   

A year since they stole the Sandrins’ boat and tried to escape, just to be ensnared by the mists.  A year since Jules and Joseph ― hopeful, sweet, stupid Joseph ― tried to save Katharine’s life, and were nearly killed for it.  A year since both Joseph and Aunt Caragh were ripped away from them.  Of course Katharine remembers that.  A thousand anniversaries could not make her forget.

“Do you think he knows?” Katharine whispers.  She would like to take Jules’s hand; but there is a yawning gap between them where Joseph should be, and she cannot bring herself to reach across it.  Stars twinkle above them.  Perhaps they are the same ones that Joseph is seeing just now, on other side of the mist.  In that other world where they had hoped their real life was waiting.  “Do you think that he is happy, out there on the Mainland?  Away from all this?”

“If he is lucky,” Jules says, “he will have forgotten that this cursed place exists.”

\--

At the next Reaping Moon festival, Katharine and Jules sneak away armed with pebbles.  After last year’s gloomy festival, they decided that pelting Olive and Vincent seemed like a better way to honor Joseph’s memory than pouting.  And on their shared thirteenth birthday, Katharine allows the fearsome Margaret Beaulin to handle Sweetheart, who hisses on contact.  The warrior’s face, wide-eyed and drained of color, is enough to have them in stitches for hours.

“What is it that they say in Bastian City?  ‘Spear of iron, heart of iron’?  I do believe that Margaret Beaulin’s iron heart nearly failed her,” Jules says, snorting.  Sweetheart is dozing happily beneath her heat lamp, belly full of crickets.  Jules reaches in to stroke her, unthinking and unafraid.  

“Easy,” Katharine cautions.  “Such a vicious creature will gobble you up at the first opportunity.”

“She is just as vicious as her name implies,” Jules retorts.  She reaches out to chuck Katharine beneath the chin.  “As vicious as her mistress.”

“I do not need to be vicious.”  Katharine grabs Jules’s hand before she can reach back into Sweetheart’s terrarium or stuff it into her pocket.  “That is why I have you.”

Jules grins at her, eyes shining in the glow of Sweetheart’s lamp.  They should still be in the square, stuffing themselves silly or sneaking ale.  But Sweetheart, like Katharine, is too small and fragile to withstand the cold for long, and Jules would have to be tied to her chair to stay at the festival without the queen.  So they stuffed Katharine’s pockets ― after checking, thoroughly, for crickets ― with sweets and snuck back to the house, arm in arm.

“Olive and Vincent have stopped sneaking off,” Katharine says.  As soon as the words leave her mouth, they feel wrong, and small in comparison to what she truly wishes to say.  But she does not even know what that is.  “She only glared at him from the corner of the main tent while he talked to Polly.”

Jules chuckles.  “What a shame.  I was so hoping for a spring wedding.”  

“Four more years,” Katharine says, “and you will attend one.  And a coronation besides.”  

Jules does not chuckle at that.  She pulls Katharine closer, so that they are facing each other.  At some point in the summer, each of them stopped growing; now, they stand almost nose to nose.  “Your wedding, you mean.  Your coronation.”

Katharine and Jules have not been this close since that horrible morning on the boat, when the waves threw them together over and over again, until they bruised.  Jules is warm all over, hot breath blowing on Katharine’s face.  But the queen does not want to move away.  “It will all be thanks to you,” she says.  Her voice cracks, even though she is trying keep her words light.  Jovial, as though she is only teasing.  “My protector.”

When Jules leans forward, crossing what little space is left between them to kiss her, Katharine is not surprised.  It only feels like something else that they should be doing together.  Perhaps it is what they have been moving towards this whole time, ever since that day at Midsummer when Jules took her wreath and called her a ninny.  Perhaps Jules has always been the Goddess’s way of making amends with her youngest daughter, an iron-hearted protector for the little Snake Queen.


	2. The Forest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the first half of one whole chapter; however, I decided to split it so I could get back into posting! Expect the second half and a little extra (cough, a ficlet, cough) tomorrow evening when I get home from work!

A queen’s birthday is a high festival in its own right, whether the island is celebrating the rising triplets or the Queen Crowned.  There is food and dancing in every city until well after sundown ― in those housing queens, the ale flows until daybreak.

Queen Katharine is not sure why her fifteenth birthday party feels so like a funeral.  It is not even her last.

But there are other lasts approaching ― Midsummer and the first snow and the Reaping Moon.  Already, every breath she takes feels stolen. As though soon, she will have to give it back, all of it.  Her queensblood and bird-bones. Her clever little coral snake. Her Jules. Katharine looks at her and knows that one day, they may kiss without knowing that it will never happen again.  

Last night, with Camden dozing on the rug and Sweetheart beneath her lamp, they had kissed for hours.  There was more to it lately, all curious hands and rucked-up nightgowns; but it was only kissing, then, soft mouths and fingers laced in each other’s hair.  

“I love you,” Katharine whispered, because it was true.  She had been saying it since they were children; but it tasted different in her mouth, now.  Bittersweet. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed twelve times ― ringing in their fifteenth birthday.  

“And I you,” Jules said, grinning.  They were pressed together from forehead to toe-tip, their legs tangled, both radiating heat.  It did not feel like enough. “Happy birthday, Kat.”

“Happy birthday,” the queen echoed.  And then, because she could not help it: “One more year.”

“Two more years and we will celebrate in the Volroy,” Jules said, her smile faltering.  “Won’t be the same without Madge’s clams, though. Perhaps we can bring her with us.”

Jules would not think of the alternative.  Any mention of it made her curl in on herself and go cold for hours.  But Katharine hardly ever stopped. Her old dreams of the orchard and the sea were cracked through with lightning, waves turned to blood.  She saw little daysailers dashed against the rocks with her own child-corpse inside. The queen could not shake the thought that death or coronation was fast approaching, when the Breccia Domain or a king-consort would claim her.  This life would be over either way.

“It will not be the same if Mirabella or Arsinoe is queen,” she whispered.

There was no more kissing that night.  Only Jules’s arms around her tight as a vice, as though she could anchor her there.  

During the party, they steal away to share cake and oysters beneath a pine tree.  Katharine is glad not to eat beneath the shadow of Queen Bernadine’s tapestry. Sweetheart slithers from her wrist and into her thick rabbit’s-wool scarf, seeking warmth; or perhaps she is hiding from Camden.  Katharine has spent the last two years trying to convince Sweetheart that Jules’s familiar is only an oversized kitten, but it seems that the little snake is not taking any chances. When the mountain cat nuzzles the queen’s shoulder, seeking her scaled friend, Sweetheart hisses.  

“Know when you’ve been rejected,” Katharine says, nudging the cat away and turning to Jules.  “So stubborn. Just like you.”

“When have I ever been stubborn?” Jules asks, indignant.  It makes Katharine giggle.

“Every day of my life,” the queen retorts.  She flutters her long eyelashes, leaning towards a scowling Jules.  Two years of this have made her much better at flirting, although only Jules ever sees it.  “Do not look at me like that, Juillenne Milone. It takes a bit of stubbornness to kiss a queen, I would think.”

Jules grunts.  “A bit of madness, too,” she huffs.  

But there is a smile tugging up the corners of her mouth as Katharine shuffles over to peck her cheek, growing broader as the queen allows herself to be grabbed about the waist and hoisted into Jules’s lap.  They are both still short, but Jules is stronger. Katharine buries her head in the crook of her neck, sighing ― a perfect fit. Sweetheart peeks her head out to nose against Jules’s throat.

“Did I ruin things last night?” Katharine asks, voice muffled from mumbling into Jules’s coat.  The queen can feel the exact moment that she tenses, every muscle of her shoulder straining.

“You were only being morbid,” Jules says.  “Grandad says that all queens are like that when they’re nearing an Ascension Year.”  She cards one hand through Katharine’s long black hair, the other going to stroke Sweetheart’s scales.  “You forget that Camden and I will not let anyone near you.”

The cat settles across their laps, purring in agreement.  

Katharine smiles into Jules’s shoulder.  If she and Sweetheart cannot be strong enough to pose a threat, there will always be Jules and her mountain cat.  Perhaps they will be enough.

\--

Winter fades into spring, young streams full of melted snow trickling down from the hills and into the sea.  Katharine and Jules watch from the window of Gillespie’s Bookshop as young people carrying tents and trunks strike out for Innisfuil.  

“Have you been to the Beltane festival, Luke?” Katharine asks, feeding Sweetheart a beetle.  Luke keeps them on-hand for his own familiar, Hank, a handsome young rooster.

He nods, chuckling.  “When I was sixteen, I couldn’t wait for Beltane.  I thought that it would be the grandest thing in the world.  Do you know what it really was?”

Jules cocks an eyebrow.  “What?”

“A three-day-long sermon with drinking and bonfires at night.  And the Hunt, where I was nearly trampled to death. Hank and I are much better suited to life at home, I’m afraid.”  He pours tea for each of them, dropping two lumps of sugar into Katharine’s without being asked to. “But we will certainly be there next year to support the Chosen Queen.”

Sometimes, Luke looks at her with a reverence that makes Katharine want to scream.  He is not much older than them, and so full of youthful optimism that he often seems like a little boy.  It reminds her of Joseph. She wonders if he is still like that, after almost five years on the mainland.  

“Mirabella will appreciate it,” Katharine says, grinning as both Luke and Jules go to scold her.  They will not hear it, even as others whisper that Mirabella is as strong as the Queens of Old. Even as Katharine’s own dreams are shot through with flames and lightning.  

“As much as I would love to gawk with you two all day, Grandma needs help in the orchard.  We’ve a blighted apple tree to cut down before it infects the others,” Jules says, pushing her chair back and standing to stretch.  She leans down to kiss the top of Katharine’s head, not bothering with secrecy. They never have, with Luke.

But Katharine still notices him grinning as they watch Jules go, Camden trotting behind her.  

“Will it be strange, seeing me with a king-consort instead?” she asks.  That is another item on the growing list of things that she and Jules do not talk about.  Even imagining it makes Katharine’s stomach twist.

Luke shrugs.  “You will still have her.  Queens are not expected to give anything up.”

Katharine has heard stories of queens with lovers.  The great Bernadine had her own naturalist man; Colette is said to have had dozens, if not hundreds; and the people have done more than whisper of Queen Camille and Natalia Arron, her foster sister and the head of her Black Council.  When Katharine remembers the poisoner’s ice-chip eyes and scowling mouth, it is hard to imagine her loving anyone; but perhaps she was not always like that. Perhaps Camille’s leaving is what turned her cold. The queen cannot imagine leaving Jules, whether it be next spring or a hundred Beltanes from now.

“Perhaps you could seduce my king-consort for me,” Katharine says, laughing when Luke goes red.  “I am afraid Jules will set Camden on any suitor that dares to touch me.”

Luke quirks an eyebrow.  “You say that as if you would not like it.”  

\--

Starlings have rushed into the clearing, filling every tree.  The branches sag with their weight. Those that cannot find a perch are swirling about the queen in a great, black cloud.  Every chirp and beating wing sings through her blood. One bird lights on her shoulder and stays there, its little body blending with her own dark hair.  

Katharine has done this with Jules dozens of times, with starlings and butterflies and even the visiting cicadas ― hands linked, calling out to whatever may listen.  But Jules is not here. It is all her doing, her gift. The birds’ cawing vibrates down to her bones. Even she can admit that it will be an imposing sight, come the Quickening.  She only hopes that there are this many starlings so near the beach. She only hopes that it will be enough to distract from Arsinoe’s poison feast and whatever awesome display of power Mirabella conjures up.

The birds spook and scatter a moment later when Camden barrels into the clearing, claws out and hoping to catch herself a snack.  In spite of her size, she is still practically a baby, and playful as the kittens that live in the Andersons’ barn. When she sees Katharine, she charges the little queen’s legs and nearly topples her to the ground.  

Katharine scratches Camden behind the ears, making her purr.  “Where is Jules, then?” she asks. Once, Jules could creep up and grab Katharine from behind without so much as a twig cracking; but Camden has made that impossible.  “Or has she sent you to fetch me?”

Camden purrs again, butting her nose against Katharine’s pockets.  Searching for Sweetheart or, at least, some of Sweetheart’s crickets.  But Sweetheart is at home, luxuriating beneath her lamp. Katharine has not tried to practice with her familiar about her wrist yet.  She is afraid that the birds will make her little snake nervous, although the queen knows that she would not bite.

Katharine follows Camden down through the woods and past the Milone house, all the way to the edge of the square.  She sprints to keep up, only pausing to wave as she passes Madge’s cart and Luke’s store. It is only when the squat, off-white central building of Wolf Spring Temple comes into view that she remembers what day it is: Midsummer.  Camden is bringing her to collect her wreath.

Head Priestess Autumn bows to her and makes the sign of the Goddess ― two fingers to each temple, and then to her heart ― before calling for a novice to bring out the wreath of the naturalist queen.  

“We have made it especially blessed this year,” the novice whispers.  She cannot be older than twelve. Her big eyes stay fixed to the floor.  “With extra poppies for luck. Not that you will need it, Queen Katharine.”  

Behind them, Priestess Autumn clears her throat.  “Thank you, Nora. You may return to your lessons.”  

Katharine is sure to smile widely at Nora as she scurries off, skinny shoulders hunched.  She knows what it is like to be small, although no one has ever dared to send her away. “It is a beautiful wreath, Nora,” she calls.  

It is, all ivy and yellow poppies and fresh-smelling bundles of pine needles, intricately woven together and studded with delicate orange blossoms.  She studies it as Priestess Autumn goes on about how tiny Katharine seemed during that first festival, when the wreath had been nearly as big as her head.  How proud they had been to see her grow taller and stronger with each passing year, more self-assured. How the Goddess had blessed the Head Priestess by placing her there.  

There is an undercurrent of melancholy to Autumn’s words that the queen cannot place.  It is only when the priestess reaches out to squeeze her shoulder before turning to go that Katharine realizes she is saying goodbye.

\--

Before the festival begins in earnest, Madrigal catches Katharine in the kitchen and insists on braiding flowers into her hair.

“I bloomed these myself,” she trills, steering Katharine towards a chair with a bunch of violets in one hand, “in the hot-house this morning.”  She squints down at the queen, holding the flowers up beside a strand of hair. After a moment, she clucks her tongue and says, “I envy this black, black hair of yours.  So shiny.”

Madrigal weaves a bud in and gives the braid a little tug, making Katharine yelp.  

“But your scalp is weak,” Madrigal amends.  

“It _hurt_.”  Katharine grits her teeth.  Even in her own ears, it sounds like the petulant whine of a child.  “You could have warned me.”

Madrigal hums, noncommittal.  “Queens are made to hurt.”

\--

That night, Katharine turns to Jules and says, “Autumn was in a strange mood today.”  

They are in the midst of their Midsummer tradition, sitting cross-legged on the dock with the phantom of a dark-haired boy lingering between.  Even Camden is solemn, lying still with her head resting on her paws. Katharine had kissed her wreath and whispered a little prayer into the poppies, as always.  After all these years, it is more habit than hope.

Jules chuckles drily.  “She is always in a strange mood, Kat.  Priestesses are a strange lot.”

“I think she is mourning me in advance,” Katharine says, fighting to keep her voice steady.  She does not want to ruin things like she did on their birthday, on a night already so haunted by memories of Joseph and Aunt Caragh.  But they cannot avoid it forever. “She told me what a blessing I had been to Wolf Spring. How she loved to watch me grow. On and on, like I would never see her again.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.  You saw her again just now, when she gave you your lantern.”  Jules is grinning; but Camden’s tail cuts through the air in a series of agitated flicks, betraying her thoughts.  “Maybe the thought of the Ascension Year is making her morbid, like you. But it will not mean anything once you are crowned.”

Jules is still so sure that it is possible.  She thinks that she can keep Katharine alive through willpower alone, as if the Ascension is just another childhood game in the clearing.  

But the reports out of Rolanth and Indrid Down say otherwise.  Even if Cait and Ellis will not talk to her about it, they cannot stop Katharine’s ears when Madrigal comes home from the market, flush with gossip.  The temple has thrown their support fully behind Mirabella. It has been years since High Priestess Luca so much as acknowledged the other two queens.  And Arsinoe has the Arrons, as vicious as they are strong. Fierce a sight as they are, Jules and Camden will be a speck in comparison, come time. If Arsinoe seeks her first, then Sweetheart may be of no use at all.  Katharine’s only hope is that she might call the starlings to peck her sisters’ eyes out.

“If I am not crowned,” Katharine croaks ― and she is not sure when her eyes grew wet ― “what will you do?”

“If you go,” Jules says, reaching across the space between them to lace her fingers through Katharine’s, “then I will follow.”

\--

“We should start training again.”

Since Midsummer, Jules has spent the better part of a week pacing, driving both Katharine and Camden mad.  Even Sweetheart has begun hissing in frustration at the sound of bare feet against the bedroom floor. Just now, Jules had climbed out of their shared bed with the sky outside still pitch-black.  

“Training?” Katharine asks, voice thick with sleep.  She was in the midst of one of her rare pleasant dreams ― a child-dream, with daisies in her hair and clear water rushing beneath her feet ― when Jules shook her awake.

Jules nods in quick, frantic jerks.  “Like we did when your gift was new. We should never have neglected it.”  She rakes her fingers through her wavy hair, snagging on tangles. Katharine had given up on brushing them out years ago; now, she longs to try again.  At this rate, she is afraid that Jules will pull it all out by the roots. “You will need to know how to handle yourself in a fight. In true combat, where the gift cannot help you.”

Sighing, Katharine slides out of bed and stops Jules’s pacing with a firm grip on her waist.  “What’s possessed you?” she asks, though she thinks that she knows.

Jules does not answer.  Only twists out of Katharine’s grip and resumes her pacing until, at sunup, they dress and make for the clearing.  

\--

At the height of summer, Katharine and Jules make a place for themselves in the woods, a little lean-to of branches and twine.  The queen almost feels like a child again, building villages with ivy and sticks. On clear nights, they lie together on a bed of grass and do not move until the sun rises and their hungry familiars grow restless.  Madrigal says that they are foolish to sleep in the open. But, truthfully, it is only there ― far from town, with its news of Shannon Storms in Rolanth and exotic poisons in Indrid Down ― that Katharine feels truly safe.  It will be a shame when the frost comes soon, and they have to abandon it for fear of Katharine or Sweetheart catching their death.

When they are not training, Katharine watches Jules, pacing through the trees and setting snares, traversing the woods with the ease of a wild thing.  Camden is always close behind, combing the underbrush for mice, stalking them with her belly to the forest floor. The cat is bigger, now, but quieter.  Stealthier. And every day, Katharine sees her starlings, who sometimes come without being called at all. Sweetheart, who has rarely left her wrist since Midsummer, does not so much as hiss at the birds, as though she knows Katharine’s purpose.  Perhaps, because of their familiar bond, she does.

By the time the Reaping Moon arrives, Jules has seen to it that Katharine is proficient with both the bow and throwing knives, using crudely carved tree-trunk targets.  After a week or so, grappling hand-to-hand proved useless, ending far too often in something that could not be mistaken for fighting. “Batting your eyelashes will not do much against your sisters,” Jules would warn, moments before pulling Katharine down to the grass.  

But Katharine is steady enough with the bow, if a little thrown off by the weight of it at first.  Now, if she flexes just so, the vaguest hint of muscle stands out on her arm. And, on the occasions when she is able to strike the target on the first attempt, the knives are impressive.  Come spring, the people will roar to see one sunk into Arsinoe’s chest.

After all these years, Katharine is not sure why the thought of it makes her feel ill.  Killing is supposed to come as naturally to ascending queens as two stags locking antlers.  Perhaps it will be different once the queen has seen her sisters face-to-face, so that she is no longer picturing a black-haired child, lying face down in the stream with blood soaking her shirt.  It is an image that follows her from the daylight world and into her dreams. Often, she turns the body onto its back just to see that the face is her own.

\--

The sun does not rise on Queen Katharine’s sixteenth birthday; or, if it does, its rays never touch Wolf Spring.  White tents stand stark against a slate-gray sky, and old snow mixes with dirt to fill the roadways with slush. Renata Hargrove, who has been sent to represent the Black Council this year, sneers as a bit of it touches the hem of her black skirt.  From what Katharine has seen, she has been sneering since she arrived, at the familiars and at the food. At the people, who bustle about in faded blacks and dribble ale down their chins. Katharine’s people, who press leather jewelry and gift-bloomed flowers into her hands as they walk past.  A dozen Hargroves would not be worth even one of them.

“Do you think she would like to handle Sweetheart?” Jules asks, spearing a bit of swordfish steak.  She and Katharine had called two of them from the deep this morning, fingers loosely linked, and allowed Camden to finish them off with a flick of her sharp claws.  “We could tell her that Margaret Beaulin does it every year, and then she will feel obligated.”

“Margaret Beaulin has only done it once,” Katharine counters, picking at her own food, “and they did not even send her last year.  It was Paola Vende.”

Jules scoffs.  If they were not in the middle of the tent, surrounded by so many polished boots and scampering familiars, she would probably spit.  Paola Vende and the other poisoners of the Black Council ― seven, nearly all of them Arrons ― would not dare to leave Indrid Down this year, because tonight, Queen Arsinoe will partake in her first _Gave Noir._

Madrigal insists that she has heard tell of poisons sent for from the Mainland months in advance, toxins so strong that they would kill even a weaker poisoner queen.  She says that Arsinoe will devour it all without even thinking.

As for Margaret Beaulin, she is probably in Rolanth, toasting Mirabella with the High Priestess.  Luca sent Katharine her regards through Priestess Autumn, as always; but she has never come to Wolf Spring for Katharine’s birthday, not even once.  The whole island knows that she is in Mirabella’s pocket, and the Temple along with her. Even Autumn has become withdrawn, no longer so quick to press kisses to Katharine’s forehead or invite her for tea.

There are whispers that Arsinoe will drape a cobra about her shoulders for the _Gave Noir_ , and Natalia Arron’s black mamba is known across the island.  Desperate as she is to impress the poisoners, Renata Hargrove would likely delight in handling a snake.  Katharine tucks Sweetheart into her dress pocket for safekeeping.

Just as they are about to stuff their pockets with wrapped food and make for the woods, Renata Hargrove stands and clears her throat.  It does little to stop the other revellers from talking and drinking; but when Grandma Cait pushes to her feet, every head in the tent snaps to attention.  

Jules groans.  “Is she going to toast you?  I almost preferred the blatant disrespect.”

“People of Wolf Spring,” Renata begins, looking entirely too self-satisfied.  If it were meant to be a simple toast, she would be grinding it out through bared teeth.  “First, I would like to propose a toast to our ascending queens.” The people raise their glasses, eyes darting nervously across the tent to settle on Katharine, who is standing frozen and gone scarlet with embarrassment.  After Renata has sipped her ale ― managing to wrinkle her nose only slightly ― she continues. “But I have come from the capitol bearing more than well wishes. I bring news of one of your own. One lost long ago.”

Renata pauses, again, for effect.  Katharine can see Jules’s jaw working as she grinds her teeth.  The fur on Camden’s back rises. Eyes narrowed to slits, Renata fixes her gaze squarely on the queen as she says, “Joseph Sandrin’s banishment has ended.  He sails from the Mainland within the week.”

Somewhere in the tent, Annie Sandrin shrieks.  

\--

“Why would they send him now?  With everything at its most dangerous!  And you know that he will want to help!”  

Jules is pacing again.  For the first hour, Camden paced with her; now, admitting defeat, she is reclining with her head in Katharine’s lap.  The queen scratches the cat behind the ears.

“This is all designed to throw you off course,” Jules hisses, spinning on her heel just in time to avoid smacking into the far wall of their bedroom.  She makes her way to the window, leans her head out, and spits. “Poisoners. Treasonous, the whole lot of them.”

“Perhaps it will be nice,” Katharine ventures, one hand darting out to catch Jules’s arm as she stalks past, “to return to our old ways for a little while.  Romping with Joseph in the forest.”

“We do not have time for romping!” Jules says, exasperated.  But then, she looks into Katharine’s upturned face ― black doll’s eyes and heavy lashes.  One flutter and her resolve is crumbling. It is so easy that the queen does not even have to try.  Jules’s voice is softer when she says, “Kat, we do not. We cannot.”

“Juillenne,” Katharine says.  She has hardly called her that since they were children, when Jules scolded her for it.  “It will still be our Joseph. It should be easy enough to keep him out of harm’s way, come time.  He has always listened to you.”

“If I strike him, maybe.”  Jules huffs; but she is grinning, too.

\--

One day before Joseph is due back, Madrigal insists that Katharine come into the woods with her.  They trek uphill, pushing past branches and brambles until they are so deep in the trees that the midday sky is blotted out.  Madrigal’s crow, Aria, caws from somewhere up ahead.

“Nearly there,” Madrigal says.  In the shadows, Katharine can just make out her grin.

For what must be the hundredth time, the queen asks, “What are we doing?”  

Madrigal grins wider, stepping between a break in the trees without looking back to see if Katharine is following.  The terrain turns rocky, stones so large that they cannot be covered by snow jutting out of the ground. A single, bent-over tree sprouts from the hill side.  That is where Madrigal stops, retrieving wood for a small fire and settling herself on a three-legged stool. Aria trills once more before settling herself on a branch above their heads.  They have been here before.

Producing a small leather pouch from the folds of her cloak, Madrigal says, “What do you know of low magic?”

“Nothing,” Katharine says, quick and sharp.  It is true enough. She knows only the horror stories that Aunt Caragh told her long ago, of sideways prayer and twisted intentions.  Of how low magic will always circle back to bite. “Madrigal, is that what you brought me here for?”

Madrigal smirks.  She has emptied the contents of the pouch onto a slab of rock: A faded scrap of green fabric, a length of black ribbon, and a thick braid of hair that Katharine immediately knows belongs to Jules.  There is a silver knife glinting in Madrigal’s hand. Pinching the braid between two fingers, she says, “I have been saving this since Midsummer. A bit of yours, too.” Katharine recalls Madrigal’s insistence on braiding violets into her hair.  Maybe there were some in Jules’s, too, obscured as they may have been by waves and tangles. “But that is for another day.”

Before Katharine can interject, Madrigal picks up the piece of fabric.  “A bit of Joseph’s shirt,” she says, “from when you were children. It snagged on a nail in the barn.”  She ties it into the ends of the braid before handing both to Katharine. It feels heavy in the queen’s palm, and unnaturally warm.  Sweetheart hisses at it before retreating into Katharine’s scarf.

Madrigal purses her lips.  “I know you think me heartless.”  She prods the fire with a stick, makes it spit sparks.  “But I have been in love before. Bound to someone.”

Katharine studies the items in her hand.  She knows without being told that Madrigal wants her to finish what she started, twist them together until they become inseparable.  Worse, she somehow knows exactly why. “Is that what this is? A love spell?” the queen asks, her mouth impossibly dry. “For Jules and Joseph?”  The thought makes her want to scream ― _she is mine, already.  She is bound to me by more than some silly charm._ But Madrigal could not possibly know that.  They have been so careful, so guarded with everyone but Luke.

“That is the first thing,” Madrigal says.  The silver knife in her hand shines orange in the firelight.  “But what I truly want is to make you strong.” She glances at Katharine, then at the charm in her hand.  “When Beltane has ended and the Ascension begins, do you think that you have a chance? Do you think that you are the Chosen Queen?”  

Katharine grits her teeth.  “Only the Goddess knows who is chosen.”  

Madrigal tuts.  “That is the Temple talking.  The island knows that your sisters are stronger ― and so do you.  Even Jules does, though she would never admit it.” The charm is heavy as lead in Katharine’s palm.  From the other side of the flames, Madrigal’s eyes meet hers.

“I do not see what this has to do with Joseph.”  Inside Katharine’s scarf, Sweetheart twists uncomfortably.  “Or a love spell.”

“We do not have to do this,” Madrigal says, sighing.  “Pretend that I am blind. My daughter loves you. But we both know that love cannot stop poison, or tradition.  Come the Ascension, her heart will break either way ― unless we do something now.” She gestures towards the charm.  Katharine wants to throw it on the fire. “With Joseph, she could have a life. One free from hiding. One that would continue even if you were not here.

“You have seen firsthand what Natalia Arron can do, and I know that you have heard whispers of far worse; but she was not always like that.  Sixteen years ago, her mother was the monster who made the island tremble. Natalia was only the queen’s shadow. It was when Camille left that her heart stalled out and turned to ice.”  Madrigal leans down, scooping snow into her cupped hands to smother the fire. She sheathes her silver knife. But she does not take the charm back. “Think on it, Katharine. If you truly love our Jules, you will not let that happen to her.”  

\--

Katharine does not sleep that night.  As soon as they are alone, she kisses Jules until her lips are almost sore.  She twines her fingers in her hair, snagging on tangles. She presses their foreheads together and memorizes every shifting shade of blue and green in Jules’s two-colored eyes.  She studies every inch of this Jules, plucks her like a flower to be pressed and dried in a book ― to keep.

And in the morning, while Jules snores softly in the bed that they share, she makes for the bent-over tree.

\--

“Will she forget me?”

The braid and the cloth are wrapped together, now, a series of intricate knots and twists.

“We cannot be sure of anything.”

The knife glints in Madrigal’s hand.  If Katharine tilts her head just so, she can see herself reflected in the blade.

“Will I forget?”

When Madrigal looks at her, her pretty eyes are almost sad.

“Queens are very good at forgetting.”

It is hardly comforting, as lies go.  Blood is flowing hot from the bend of Katharine’s right arm, soaking into the charm and turning the snow at her feet crimson.  Turning Jules’s hair the color of rust. Her Jules.

\--

The first time Jules sees Katharine, it is as though she is blinking herself awake from a long, long dream.  After a moment, she steps forward with an enthusiastic, “Kat!” But nothing comes after. Not even the barest squeeze of her hand.  

 _We are on the dock_ , Katharine rationalizes, _and half of Wolf Spring along with us._

The queen steps closer, and Jules leans into her shoulder.  She nearly screams with relief. Perhaps the charm was truly just a bit of junk.  Madrigal has always liked to scare her. It did not really work.

“Joseph should be here any moment,” Jules says.  Katharine knows that voice ― it is too high, and almost shaky.  She is nervous. There is the faintest of blushes on her cheeks.    

If it were not for Madge bustling towards them, hoisting a basket of clams and grinning with what teeth she has left, Katharine would turn on her heels and run back to the bent-over tree, where the charm has been strung up to dry.  She wants to hurl it into Sealhead Cove.

“Juillenne Milone!” Madge exclaims.  “Should you not be farther up? We all know who he’ll want to be seeing.”  She winks at Katharine, oblivious. A few of the rubberneckers nearby grunt their agreement.  It is as though the low magic has spread to the whole town, planting the idea of a love that never was in their minds.  

Jules scoffs; but her blush is obvious, now.  “Thought that I would let his family greet him first, Madge.”  

Every drop of blood in Katharine’s body is roaring in her ears.  Her face is impossibly hot.

When Joseph’s ship breaks through the mist, Katharine wants to be overjoyed.  She wants to cry out for him, as Annie and Matthew are doing. She wants a grin to split her face in two, like Madge.  She wants her breath to hitch as Jules’s does.

Joseph does not even linger with his family.  He pushes through the crowd, calling Jules’s name.  They embrace, tugging one another closer until their edges blur.  

This morning, when she crept out of bed to complete Madrigal’s ritual, Katharine had said that she wanted, more than anything, for Jules to be happy.

Now, tears well in her eyes.  She wants only to turn and run.      

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! It's been a while. I recently experienced the worst tragedy of my life--my youngest brother died unexpectedly. I thought I would never return to fandom, and especially this fandom (seeing as how it deals with three siblings, and death). However, I have found it cathartic. I also think my brother would want me to do this, as crazy as that sounds. He always wanted me to pursue my writing. Thank you all for your patience, and a special thanks to naturalistprincess on tumblr for screaming with me. This is for you!!


	3. Beltane

For two weeks, Katharine leaves the house at sunrise and does not return until well after dark.  She lingers in the forest with her starlings, most days, or in Luke’s bookshop. But even his familiar company makes her want to scream ― even he does not remember.   

One morning, Madrigal takes her into the woods, carves up her arms and lets the blood flow into jars.  For a curse, or perhaps another charm. Katharine is hardly even there, never so much as flinching when the knife bites into her arm.  She hardly hurts at all, anymore. Maybe this is what Madrigal meant when she promised to make her strong. 

Sometimes, Jules is home and sleeping when Katharine returns; others, she stumbles in when the sky is turning light again, so giddy that it fills the room with heat and blooms the flowers on their windowsill.  Most nights, Katharine presses her face into the mattress and weeps. They sleep in separate beds, now, and Jules does not question a thing.

But eventually, she finds the queen in her clearing; and worse, she is not alone.  

“Kat!” Jules shouts, just as Camden rushes in, scattering the starlings.  The cat still purrs and butts her head against the queen’s legs whenever they meet, at least.  Joseph, following just behind, flashes her a winning Sandrin smile that she struggles to return.  If he has noticed that Katharine is keeping her distance, he will not say it. Eleven year old Joseph ― her Joseph ― could not have stood to be treated this way for even ten minutes.   “There is someone we want you to see!”

Katharine does not know when Jules and Joseph became “we.”  It turns her stomach.

With her starlings gone, the queen can see that someone is lingering by the treeline.  A nod from Joseph, and they step fully into the light. It is a boy nearly as tall as Joseph, but lankier, with a head of thick, dark blonde hair.  And he is wearing the unmistakable, light-colored clothes of a Mainlander. 

“This is my foster brother, William Chatworth Jr.,” Joseph says.  Then, as if on cue, William Chatworth Jr. grins. When Katharine fails to react, Joseph clears his throat and adds, “He’s a suitor.”

“Then I should not see him until the night of the Disembarking,” Katharine says curtly.  

She would like to call her starlings back, to surround herself with them until the rest of the world is blotted out.  But between Camden and the Mainlander, they have had a proper fright, and are scattered to the farthest treetops. Just now, the queen wishes that she could join them.  Of her own accord, Sweetheart slithers down the sleeve of Katharine’s coat, poking her brightly-striped head out to hiss.

Jules fixes them with a disapproving look.  With one jerk of her head, she sends both Joseph and the suitor scrambling to the edge of the clearing.  When Jules steps towards her, putting one hand on the queen’s arm, Katharine must fight the urge to jerk away.   _ Do not touch me _ , she nearly screams, as if that is not all she wants.  

“What has gotten into you?” Jules asks.  She is close, now, so that Katharine can no longer avoid her eyes.   They are bright with genuine worry that, for a moment, makes the queen almost sick with guilt.  “Kat, you have not been yourself since Joseph returned.”

“Perhaps it is everyone else who is not themselves,” Katharine snaps.  Sweetheart is writhing restlessly on her arm, and she steps backwards ― afraid, for the first time, that her little snake may strike.   “Why are you so keen on this William Chatworth Jr. anyhow?”

Jules sighs.  “That was Joseph’s idea.  But I did not think you would be so opposed to it,” she says.  Camden noses at Katharine’s hip from behind, as if she would push her forward.  “He is not so bad as all that. And we worry about you, Kat ― spending so much time alone out here.  At least come down to the Lion’s Head for lunch.”

“Isn’t the naturalist queen supposed to spend time in the forest?  Get dirt on her dress?” Katharine asks. Strong as the cat is, Camden cannot push her all the way into town.  But now that she is not surrounded by her birds, the queen is freezing, and her traitorous stomach growls. 

“It is only lunch, Kat.  Not the Disembarking,” Jules says, smiling.  Katharine’s foolish heart leaps in spite of itself.  

\--

William Chatworth Jr. insists on being called Billy.  

“William is my father,” he says, laughing.  Now that Jules and Joseph have left them alone in the pub, he is so nervous that half of his sentences are laughs.    

Katharine offers him a strained smile in response ― although truthfully, she does not understand why his mother did not find him worthy of an original name.  But she is not really listening to anything he says, anyhow. Instead, the queen is thinking on the way Jules and Joseph stole away at the first opportunity, smiling conspiratorially at one another.  She is thinking on where they will go, what they will do. She thinks that she knows. To tell William ― Billy ― that she is ill and needs to lie down would not be a lie, at least. 

It takes her a moment to realize that Billy is still talking.  “Has no one on the island ever used a name twice? With all your thousands of queens?”

“No,” Katharine says, only because she feels as though a close-mouthed grin or a jerk of the head will not suffice.  There have been similar ones ― Bernadine and Beatrice, Colette and Camille. She knows that much from the histories, and Ellis and Caragh’s bedside tales.  But she does not want to give this Mainlander the satisfaction of being even half-right.

Billy laughs again.  If they are to be around each other until Beltane, Katharine is sure she will go mad from it.  

Somehow, they move from the Lion’s Head and into the street, where every head in Wolf Spring pivots on its neck to stare as they trek past.  Katharine would like to climb the hill and strike out for home, so that she and Sweetheart might get some rest; but Billy Chatworth would probably follow her up the stairs and into her bedroom, prattling and oblivious.

“The island is very beautiful,” Billy says, following closely at her heels.  He is eager as a dog. “I am in love with it already.” Katharine nods wordlessly.  For his sake, she hopes that that is all he will fall in love with. 

Billy continues, “Home was always dull; but after this, it will be unbearable.”  He nods towards her wrist, where Sweetheart is coiled. “The girls I know at home would shriek at the sight of him.”

“Her,” Katharine snaps, making Sweetheart hiss.  Billy smiles sheepishly, but he cannot disguise the fact that he flinches away.  For a moment, he looks almost afraid. Perhaps he should be. 

\--

The next morning, Katharine awakens to the sound of Aria’s wings flapping against the bedroom window.  As soon as her eyes meet the crow’s, it is gone. Flying for the bent-over tree.

Madrigal is waiting for her, huddled by the fire, knife in hand.  A jar of old blood is sitting on the ground, half-buried in snow. And Katharine cannot keep herself from staring at the leather pouch hanging from the tree’s lowest branch, with her first attempt at low magic drying inside.  Soon, Katharine will have to take the charm home and find a place for it. According to Madrigal, the bottom of the sea is not an option.

“You must learn to be nicer to your suitors,” Madrigal says, passing her knife through the fire.  Katharine extends her arm dutifully. “Men can be glorious creatures, when they want to be. You will learn that soon.”  The queen braces herself for the first cut. They are meant to be carving runes today, for good fortune and protection. “And even when they are not glorious, they are still a fair bit of fun.”

Katharine glances at her forearm.  The silver knife dances over her skin, leaving behind delicate, interconnected cuts like the silken strands of a spider’s web.  A bit of excess blood drips into the fire and sizzles on the coals. She does not know how Madrigal can think on something as mundane as suitors in this place, where the heart of the island beats so loudly that Katharine’s ears ring with it.  Sometimes, it is nearly enough to drive the thoughts of Jules ― sleeping, when she last saw her, limbs akimbo and hair stuck to the sides of her face ― from the queen’s head. 

But only nearly.

“Charming suitors does not matter,” Katharine replies.  She certainly did not charm Billy, who scurried back to the Wolverton as soon he was able.  Madrigal has moved to the queen’s palm, now, in search of unmarred skin. These runes cannot be covered by sleeves, or passed off as a cut from the chicken coop.  She will have to spend her every waking moment in gloves until Beltane. “It is the title they want. Not me.” 

Madrigal tuts.  “That is what you think now.  You will feel differently when Arsinoe has William Chatworth slip poison into your wine.”

That is against the rules, of course; but Katharine would not put anything past the poisoners.  And she has heard that both of her sisters are very beautiful. In eager boys like Billy, beauty is sure to inspire loyalty.  Madrigal’s has certainly inspired the men of Wolf Spring, who snap to attention as she walks past and sell her market goods at a discount so steep that they are almost free.  Besides Luke, the only one who seems immune is Matthew Sandrin, because of his undying loyalty to Aunt Caragh.

“Beltane is fast approaching.  Even your broken heart cannot stop it,” Madrigal says.  Finally, they are finished. Katharine has lost so much feeling in her arm that she is afraid it will fall off and be lost to the snow drifts on her walk home.  

“But we can draw on it.  Harness that devastation, spin it into strength,” Madrigal continues, passing her a cup of cider and a handful of walnuts.  She did not have the foresight to bring them the first day, and Katharine had nearly fainted. “Curses were made for the broken-hearted.”

\--

Billy Chatworth is impossible to shake.  

Sweetheart is ornery as ever, and Katharine doubly so.  He trots after them anyhow, into the market and the woods, over the hills and down to Dogwood Pond.  Katharine does not want to soften towards the mainlander; but it is hard to hate him when he is sitting at the edge of the clearing, bundled into ill-fitting islander clothes and watching her call her starlings with the awed expression of a child.

“I cannot believe you did that!” Billy shouts, not seeming to care that it startles the birds.  He is nearly as bad as Camden, and twice as loud. “And with only your mind! In all the stories, witches at least have to use spells for these sorts of things.”

Katharine freezes.  Although Billy insists that he has been taught the etiquette of the island, he is still ignorant of so many things.  Strangest of all is that when he swears, it is by a God. “You would do well not to use that word,” the queen cautions.  The starlings chatter amongst themselves, suspended as they are in midair; or perhaps they are chirping their agreement. 

“Forgive me.  That is what my father has always called you.”  He pauses, considering. “That, and monsters.”

“Do you believe everything that your father tells you?” Katharine asks.  She is still baffled by the fact that Billy’s father is here at all ― and alone ― while his mother remains on the Mainland, tending the household.  They are so terribly backwards that it makes her head spin. 

“Usually,” he admits, shrugging.  “My father is not to be argued with.  And I’m sure that all of the other suitors will think the same.  We’ve grown up on the same stories. There’s a rhyme about you all, for little girls to chant when they skip rope.”

Katharine knows the rhyme before he begins it.  Olive Anderson used to mock her with it during their games of knights and damsels while Jules’s back was turned.    

“ _ Three Black Witches are born in a glen _ ―” 

“ _ Sweet little triplets will never be friends _ ,” Katharine finishes.  “And do not say ‘witches.’”

Billy crosses his arms defensively.  “It is part of the song.”

“Not here, it isn’t.  We say ‘three dark queens.’”  Katharine releases what little hold she has left on the starlings, and they scatter to the treetops.  She drops onto the nearest rock, sitting cross-legged with Sweetheart in her lap. “What else has your father told you about us?  What other stories?”

“My father said there will be a great hunt before the wedding; and at Beltane, although I will not be allowed to participate.  And that when the other queens die, you must eat their hearts.”

“That is not true!” Katharine gasps, just as Billy’s shoulders begin to shake with suppressed laughter.  If she were closer, she would swat his arm.

“But there are suitors who will believe things like that.  When my father told me that we were to foster someone from Fennbirn, I was terrified.  I thought that he would be a beast. That he would want to sleep outdoors and sacrifice hares under the full moon.”  Billy smiles. It is lopsided and easy, and not unlike Joseph’s. “Now, he is like my own brother.”

“If you had fostered an elemental, your fears would have come true,” Katharine replies.

Grandad Ellis told her, once, that the priestesses at Rolanth Temple take sacrifices with frightening regularity.  That they cut out the hearts of pure black hares and throw them into the depths of a place called Starfall Lake. Although she has been plucking rabbits from snares since she was a child, the thought makes Katharine shudder.

“I do have much to learn about that,” Billy admits.  He stands, brushing snow from his pant-legs. They are a bit short, exposing the tops of his too-shiny boots.  “Naturalists and elementals. Poisoners. All Joseph told me was they control the island, and that I should hate them.”

Katharine cannot keep herself from smiling.  He has been that way since they were small, long before his banishment.  She can still see Joseph, frowning and mumbling,  _ I imagine ruling the island with an iron fist is a fair bit of fun.   _ His freckled face scrunched in disgust, but never for long.  That is the Joseph she had mourned those five years, whispering prayers into her Midsummer wreath.  The one she has missed. The one that is still there, buried beneath the ugly haze of low magic and every screaming beat of her own broken heart. 

“The poisoners are cruel,” Katharine says.  If she closes her eyes, she can picture herself pressed against Caragh’s knees with Jules beside her, listening to the tales of queens who came before.  Madrigal was always there to supply the gory bits ― blood from the mouth and poisoned arrows. Sylvia’s sisters, who seized and jerked until their backs broke.  “But you would do well not to hate them just yet. This time next year, Arsinoe may choose you as her consort.”

Billy shifts uneasily on his feet.  “A wife who eats poison. How would I ever kiss her?”

He is such a boy.  That is all he has to worry about ― kissing and courting and crowns.  

“Very cautiously,” Katharine suggests, pushing to her feet.   

They make their way into town.  Luke had met them in the road that morning and convinced them to spend the afternoon with him through promises of tea and strawberry cake.  When he greets them at the door and ushers them upstairs, Katharine allows Billy to steer the conversation and does her best to ignore the suggestive glimmer in Luke’s eye.  Before the low magic, it would have meant something else. There would have been a discrete elbow in her ribs and a whispered,  _ Where is Jules, then?   _

No one asks after Jules anymore.  It is well known who she is with, and where.

\--

Just as Katharine is growing accustomed to Billy’s constant presence, he receives a summons from the poisoners.

“It says here that they only want me to come for supper,” he says.  He and Katharine were sitting on the dock, sharing fried clams and feeding crickets to Sweetheart, when the letter came.  It was carried in the beak of one of Indrid Down’s unmistakable, impeccably-trained ravens and sealed with purple wax. Billy has read over it at least a dozen times.  “That’s an awfully long way to travel for supper.”

“Surely you know that it is not just supper,” Katharine says.  When Billy only looks at her, eyebrows drawn together and mouth downturned, she sighs.  “They mean to dazzle you, with all their finery and silver and silk. With my sister.” 

The queen is not jealous at the thought as she is of Joseph and Jules; but she still does not like it.  Besides Sweetheart, Billy is the one thing that belongs solely to her. “After that, they will ask you to stay on for a week, or a month.  And then you will blink and it will be Beltane.”

Billy scoffs.  “You think me disloyal.”  

“And you think yourself invincible,” Katharine counters.  

Since his arrival, Billy has been careful with her.  Sometimes, the queen forgets that she is being courted.  But it will be different with Arsinoe, in a gown and jewels.  Billy will be compelled to bow to her, kiss her hand. There will be no mistaking his purpose, or opportunity for him to forget it.  After all, he is just a boy. 

Tentatively, Katharine squeezes his shoulder.  “Poisoners are very sly. It will not be obvious that they’re trying to win you until you are already won.”

\--

All told, Billy stays on at Greavesdrake for three weeks, and everyone but Katharine makes a great show of being surprised.  When they think she is not looking, Jules and Luke exchange pitiful glances over tea. 

“It’s his father,” Joseph says, spitting.  “All he cares about are the benefits that come with the crown.”

“That is all any of the delegations care about,” Katharine snaps.  She cannot help it. It is as though every word out of Joseph’s mouth is a thorn in her side.  “I did not expect Billy’s family to be any different.”

For all their posturing, suitors do not really come to the island seeking a wife.  It is all trade and alliances and power. Even for Billy Chatworth.

To his credit, Billy writes.  His letters are short and businesslike ―  _ I am never able to eat the same supper as everyone else.  We spend most days indoors, playing cards. There is a boy here, called Pietyr, whose last name is not his father’s.   _ He never mentions Arsinoe by name.

Katharine responds in kind ―  _ Do you miss the Lion’s Head yet?  I spend my days in the woods, still.  The snow is melting.  _

The snow is melting, and with the melt comes Beltane.  In her letters, Katharine does not tell Billy that Madrigal takes her to the bent-over tree nearly every day now, and has begun carving up her legs, wrapping her hands in lengths of black cloth soaked in blood and herbs.  The queen’s skin is all scars, but she would not dare stop now. She peers into the flames and pictures Mirabella and Arsinoe’s faces withering to nothing. They are building towards the curse that will eat her sisters raw.  

When Billy does return, it is clear to see that he is heartsick.  He trails Katharine as before, but he does not prattle endlessly. There is no more boyish wonder or Mainland songs.  Sometimes, it is like he is not there at all. Sweetheart hisses at him to no avail. Even the starlings, chirping and fluttering about his head, elicit nothing.    

Finally, Katharine has had it.  Those three weeks Billy was away she had spent miserable, with the dried charm beneath her pillow and Jules constantly frowning in her direction.  This strange new Jules, who thinks the queen spends her every waking moment tangled up in thoughts of Billy. This Jules who knows her not at all. 

“My sister must really be something,” she says, “for you to be so sorry over her.”  

Billy’s head snaps up.  “What?”

“My sister,” Katharine repeats, and his eyes go wide as saucers.  

They are in the middle of the Lion’s Head, with townspeople on all sides.  Most of them are in their cups, and all are listening while pretending that they are not.  Accusing Billy of loyalty to the poisoners, here and now, could put him at the sharp end of a hunting knife before the night’s end.  Katharine grabs his sleeve and steers him towards the door. 

In the safety of the woods, the queen tries again.  And still, Billy gapes at her.

“Nothing happened with your sister,” he says.  His arms are crossed over his chest, indignant.  “Katharine, I swear it.” But he will not look her in the eye.

“I do not care if something happened.  I am not jealous.” Not in the way that he thinks.  She does not want to march into Indrid Down and scratch Arsinoe’s eyes out.  “But I do not appreciate being lied to. Since you’ve returned, you barely speak.  You are always frowning. And you just pick at Madge’s clams.”

Billy clicks his teeth.  “I did not go and fall in love with her, if that’s what you’re accusing me of.”  

“I am not accusing,” Katharine says through gritted teeth.  “I am asking.”

Sighing, Billy drops cross-legged to the ground.  It is clear of snow, now, but damp. His trousers will be soaked through.  Perhaps he is too heartsick to care. Katharine settles herself beside him.

“Before I went to your sister, I knew only what I’d heard.  That she was the head of a court of beasts. Something to fear.  I thought that your being so easy to fall in with was only a fluke.  I did not expect Arsinoe to be so…” He pauses, considering. “So like you.”   

Katharine chews her lower lip.  “A person, you mean?”

Billy nods.  “I suppose I still expect things to play out as they do in stories.  Always knowing who is good and who is evil. But I watched them eat poison for three weeks, and each time, I was less afraid.  They treated it almost like a game. As though it was just a bit of showing off.” 

_ They _ .  Katharine remembers a name from Billy’s letters, the only thing to crop up with consistency besides clipped accounts of his daily activities ― Pietyr Renard, her sister’s companion since childhood.  Natalia Arron’s nephew. As they grow older, his constant presence has become the subject of many whispers. Perhaps that is why Billy did not fall in love with Arsinoe; or perhaps he did, and broke his own heart in the process.  Katharine knows that feeling all too well. 

Billy glances at her with eyes full of guilt.  “I wanted so badly for them to be monsters, Katharine.  You have to believe me.”

“But they aren’t,” she says, sighing.  It is not his fault. It is not even really Arsinoe’s, or her Pietyr’s.  It is the Goddess and the island, the way it thrives on blood. “No more than I am.”

“No more than you are,” Billy echoes.  He reaches for Katharine’s hand, and Sweetheart slithers down her wrist to greet him.  When the snake flicks her forked tongue against his palm, he hardly flinches. “I do not know how you people survive it.  The whole mad tradition, time and again. It feels like I am befriending cows on the way to slaughter.”

Katharine cannot help but laugh at that.  “Is that how you court girls on the Mainland?  By comparing them to cows?”

“I love cows,” Billy says.  His lopsided grin is back, turning up the corners of his mouth and making his forehead wrinkle.  “At home, we had one named Helen. She was like an oversized dalmation ― spots, big brown eyes. Always so happy to see me.  When my father had her butchered, I cried for a week.”

Katharine squeezes his hand.  Sweet Billy. She does not know how he will handle things after Beltane, when she and Arsinoe go after one another like wolves.  And he has not even met Mirabella yet. No matter who is crowned, his heart will break. 

But then he will forget, as everyone does.  Everyone, Madrigal tells her, but the surviving queen, who will wrestle and claw at the specters of her sisters until the day the Goddess calls her to join them.  

\--

The weeks before Beltane are agonizingly slow to pass.  Katharine has perfected her Quickening performance ― a summoning of starlings followed by a sort of spinning dance, her body engulfed in a roaring black cloud of feathers ― and been fitted for her Disembarking gown a dozen times over.  Luke has embroidered the bodice just so, and in the torch light it will look almost like Sweetheart’s scales. 

“It is beautiful, Kat,” Jules says, smiling.  The queen is standing in the middle of Luke’s kitchen on a makeshift block of empty wooden crates.  When she smiles back, it feels as though her face will split in two from the effort.

For a moment, something seems to flicker in Jules’s two-colored eyes.  Like she is just seeing Katharine after being away on a long, long journey.  They are standing close, with Jules in charge of handing Luke pins and thread as he calls for them.  Katharine feels that same magnetism from their childhood, tugging them closer and closer to an inevitable conclusion.  From her position on the crates, the queen could lean down to…

“Pins!” Luke trills, and the moment is gone.   

\--

“I cannot abide by all this pomp and circumstance,” Billy hisses, fussing with his jacket.  Just as Luke finished tailoring his new black trousers, he is back in the tan Mainlander clothes he first arrived in.  Katharine cannot decide, now, what he looked odder in. “It’s madness, sailing out through the mist only to come right back again.  As if the other families won’t know! As soon as my father drinks two tankards of ale at some feast, he is going to tell them ―” 

“If you cannot abide by pomp and circumstance,” Katharine tuts, “perhaps you should sail straight through the mist and back to your mother.  This is only the beginning.” 

Suitors are expected to rig up black sails, and fast, and cleanse themselves with scented water, all before the Disembarking has even begun.  All before they are meant to have so much as laid eyes on the queens. Afterwards, their lives are conducted in a series of bows and public appearances and flirtatious glances, all meticulously calculated to win the hearts of the people.

Billy huffs.  His sandy-blonde hair is just long enough, now, to be blown into his eyes.  He swats it away. “My father will bring me back tied to the mast before he allows that.”

Katharine smiles, patting his shoulder in a way that she hopes is reassuring.  Since Billy returned from Indrid Down, his boyish excitement has been waning; or perhaps it was only a front to begin with, meant to win her over.  But at least he can go home, after all of this, if he is not made king-consort. At least he will be able to go anywhere at all. For Katharine, it is either the black spires of the Volroy or the bottomless pit of the Breccia Domain.  

\--

The long day’s ride to Innisfuil Valley passes in a blur of roadside towns and mountains.  Jules and Katharine’s gifts push the horses well beyond their limit; but they are still the last to arrive.  Elementals dominate the area closest to the sacred southern forest, and the poisoners look as though they have established a third city in the northern valley.  Warriors and oracles piddle about in the space in between, huddling in the shadows. 

It is hard work, wedging themselves into the middle of two towering tent-cities.  And it is harder still for Katharine, who is not supposed to be seen at all, and must drive stakes into the ground with a thick veil over her head.  

Madrigal arrives just as the last tent is erected, humming, carrying a basket of bread and cheese.  “You must be exhausted,” she chirps, taking hold of Katharine’s arm and tugging slightly. Urging her into the shadows.  

“I cannot do any curse work,” Katharine says, before Madrigal is able to open her mouth.  She cannot afford to lose blood or gain fresh scars the night before the Disembarking; and there is something about the holiness of the valley that fills her with dread, as though the Goddess is panting down the back of her neck.  

Madrigal’s pretty eyes narrow, briefly, to slits.  Then, they are wide and innocent again, lashes fluttering.  “I meant only to keep you away from prying eyes.” She tears the heel off of a loaf of bread and presses it into Katharine’s palm.  “And see if you have done as you were told.”

Katharine swallows thickly.  In her pocket, the charm of hair and cloth and blood sits heavy as a stone.  Madrigal was adamant that she bring it to the festival for fear that its effects would not follow them halfway across the island.  “Joseph is a Sandrin boy,” she had said, “and at Beltane, Sandrin boys never leave the fireside alone.”

But the charm is working well as ever.  Joseph and Jules can hardly stop eyeing one another long enough to unpack the carts.  And the queen knows that they will paint one another tonight, for the Hunt. On the ride to Innisfuil, she had heard Joseph say that he wants to wear Jules’s handprint just above his heart.  

When Katharine finally nods, Madrigal relaxes.  She sucks in a deep breath. “Do you feel it, Kat?  The heartbeat?” 

She has felt a vague thudding beneath her feet since the cart passed through Sunpool; but it is not so much a heartbeat as a war drum.  She nods anyhow.

“That is what we have been trying to come closer to, all these months.  To the real island. Raw and bloody at the core,” Madrigal whispers. “You will be alone tonight, during the Hunt.  In a place made for queens. Perhaps you should take advantage.” She nods southward, where Mirabella’s camp lies. Beyond it are the sacred woods, and the Breccia Domain.

\--

Wrapped in deerskin and black stripes painted over her eyes, hair loose, Jules looks truly wild.  Katharine hopes that her blush is not obvious in the flickering shadows from the fire pits. Once, she had dreamed of this moment.  If things were right, there would be a jar of black paint in her hand, tracing swirls and pressing fingerprints into Jules’s skin. 

Instead, she watches through the tent flaps as Jules and Joseph join the horde, melting into it until they are part of one, writhing body.  The drums grow louder and more insistent, vibrating down to Katharine’s bones. Then the High Priestess sounds the horn, and they are off. 

Katharine waits until she can no longer hear the thundering of footsteps before slipping away from the Milone encampment.  She is nearly caught twice, once by Mirabella’s priestesses and once by a drunkard who, being too old for the Hunt, took to ale instead.  Tugging the hood of her cloak tighter, she dashes through a clearing behind the High Priestess’s five-sided white tent and into the woods.  

The Breccia Domain is not visible right away; but Katharine can scent it on the air as Camden scents her prey.  Sweetheart, tucked into her sleeve, fusses and fidgets. They should not be here, in the sepulchre of vanquished queens.  Not yet. 

After wading through a stream, Katharine finds herself at the end of the treeline, with nothing but a short expanse of grass left between herself and the edge of the chasm. She steps as close to the edge as she can; then, inhaling, she drops to her knees and shuffles the rest of the way, so that she might gaze into the bottom.

The Breccia Domain is purple-black and endless.  Cold and damp waft up from its center in spite of the warm spring air.  As long as she stares into it, it is the only thing that exists. Even the breeze through the pine trees at her back is soundless, swallowed up.  It is terrifying. And yet, Katharine wants terribly to see further inside. The darkness calls to her with a mother’s voice. The voice of the Goddess.

Something tumbles out of her pocket.  For a moment, Katharine is horrified, thinking that it is Sweetheart making her escape; but the little snake is curled firmly about her forearm.  

The glint of moonlight on black ribbon catches her eye.  That bloody charm. Katharine would like to leave it there, let it be trampled into the dirt by deer.  It could not make much of a difference, now, with Jules and Joseph as moon-faced as they are. 

Just as the queen is about to pocket the charm and rise to go, an impossible wind comes howling out of the Breccia Domain.  She expects it to be harsh and prickling; instead, it curls itself around her like a cat, warm and gentle. The breeze carries no scent; no shrieking or voices from the bottom of the pit.  But there is a message in it. Intent. It urges her forward.

Katharine is not frightened, although her hands shake.    

With a final glance at the charm, she releases her grip and watches it plunge into the gaping maw of the Breccia Domain.

There is a feeling in the queen’s chest like a rope pulled taut and finally snapping.  Rid of it, at last. Never to look on it again and be reminded of what she has done. What she has lost.  Her whole being is lighter.

The sound of voices and twigs cracking put a stop to her reverie.  

“You will see him soon enough,” the first voice ― a girl’s ― says.  Katharine recognizes it, somehow, as though they have talked together in a dream.  

“If I can slip away,” the other argues ― a boy, with the posh accent of a council-woman’s son.  The footsteps grow closer, and Katharine dashes to the cover of the treeline. 

The girl scoffs.  They are almost upon her, now, their boots stomping past Katharine’s tree.  Perhaps they are hunters separated from the horde. Or lovers, seeking a solitary place beneath the trees to celebrate their victory.  

“When have you ever had trouble slipping away?” the girl asks.  

“I have never slipped away at Beltane!” the boy hisses.  “At home, there was no army of priestesses!” 

“Then take it as a challenge.  Are we nearly there?”

The sound of twigs cracking stops abruptly.  “If you take another step, you are going to fall in,” the boy cautions.  

It would serve them right, Katharine thinks, if they have only come to gawk at this, the most sacred of places.  She peers past the tree trunks, expecting to see two city children in ill-fitting hunting gear and crossbows, with nothing to show for it.

Instead, she is met with the moonlit sight of two striking heads of hair ― one so blonde that it is almost white, the other shining like obsidian.  And even covered by a cloak, the girl’s full, black skirts are unmistakable. It is her sister, Arsinoe, and the Arron boy.

Shocked as she is, Katharine stumbles back without checking her surroundings.  A raised root snags the edge of her cloak, sends her sprawling. Then Arsinoe’s head snaps up, and she knows that she is done for.  Sweetheart hisses and writhes as the queen scrambles upright, sensing danger ― sweet, loyal, clever little snake. As though she could do anything to a poisoner queen.

“Who is there?” Arsinoe demands.  In the all-consuming silence of the southern woods, her voice seems to echo.  Exchanging a look with the Arron boy ― Pietyr ― she marches towards the trees.  She is incredibly tall, although Katharine has heard that Mirabella is the tallest.  Billy had said that the poisoner queen was not a beast; but in the darkness, her white teeth glint sharp as a wolves.  

“Hunting in the southern woods is forbidden,” Arsinoe hisses, grabbing Katharine’s sleeve and spinning her around with ease, as though she could hoist the little queen over her shoulder like a ragdoll and toss her into the Breccia Domain.  Pietyr is just behind her.

“Arsinoe,” he gasps, just as the queens’ eyes meet for the first time.  

Arsinoe unhands her at once.  “You!” she spits, as though it is a curse word.  But her dark eyes are wide as dinner plates, and her face very pale.  To be so much taller and stronger, she seems terribly afraid. “What are you doing out here?”

Katharine squares her shoulders.  She does not want to turn and scurry away like a frightened mouse.  She will not give them the satisfaction. 

“What I shouldn’t,” she snaps.  “Same as you.”

“This is not done,” Pietyr starts.  Arsinoe silences him with only a look.  

Katharine has dreaded this moment for nearly ten years.  But in her mind, it had played out after Beltane, on the sharp end of a knife edged with poison.  And perhaps it had not really been the other queen pressing the blade to her throat, but a twisted copy of herself.  An amorphous, monstrous thing of pure darkness. It had not been this flesh-and-blood person with eyes full of fear. It had not really been Arsinoe.  

Somehow, this is so much worse.

In the distance, the drums are rolling out a low, steady beat.  The Hunt will end soon, and Beltane will have begun in earnest. There will be time enough for this confrontation.  

Arsinoe regains her composure with poisoner quickness.  But there is no real venom in her voice when she says, “You should run, little Katharine.  The next time we meet, you may not have the chance.” 

\--

At the Disembarking, there is a live coral snake curled about Arsinoe’s wrist.  Jules takes it as a deliberate slight; but to Katharine, it is obvious that the creature has been drugged.  Its scaled body is limp, its tail barely flicking. Sweetheart slithers up the naturalist queen’s arm again and again, as though she would compete with it.

Mirabella stands tall between them both, her skirts billowing in the wind to expose long, porcelain-pale legs.  A necklace of fiery opals is her only adornment ― she does not even wear shoes. But she is so beautiful that no one seems to notice.  Even Joseph’s eyes linger on her stage until Jules steers him towards the beach, leaving Katharine with a tight smile and a light kiss on the forehead that makes her foolish heart sing.    

The suitors come ashore to a great black sea of skirts and vests.  There are bows and curtsies, and a few curious glances at Katharine and Arsinoe’s matching snakes.  When Billy, the last to leave his launch, steps onto the beach, his eyes dart nervously between Katharine and Arsinoe before he bows, long and slow, to both.  He is the only suitor from whom Mirabella does not receive so much as a nod. 

All night, Billy flutters nervously to-and-fro.  Katharine watches his sandy head disappear and arrive again a dozen times.  She would almost like to have Jules go forward and give him an ultimatum; but it would not be fair to make him choose.  Not when the queen cannot possibly offer him what Arsinoe still might. 

When the fires burn low and the lovers have all paired off, Billy disappears for good.  Jules lingers at Katharine’s side, eyeing the last of the five suitors as he creeps timidly past the edge of their encampment.  

“They are afraid of Sweetheart,” Jules says, chuckling.  

She is in one of Luke’s gowns as well, all copper and green, edged with ribbon.  Her lips are touched with gold. Every flash of her teeth makes Katharine’s chest ache.  There is a sort of frantic twitching in her fingers ―  _ touch her, touch her _ ― that the queen suppresses by clutching the side of the tent.  

“Not everyone has been handling her since she was a hatchling,” Katharine replies.  Just now, the little snake is dozing beneath her lamp; but the boys are not close enough to see.  They probably think that she is hiding somewhere in the folds of the queen’s dress, waiting to strike.  

Jules laughs again.  When she turns to Katharine, their faces are very close.  And neither of them is much taller than the other, even after all this time.  

Since hurling the charm into the Breccia Domain, Katharine has not noticed any change; but perhaps that is because she has not tried.  Low magic is just as much action as it is intent. Tentatively, she raises her hands to cup Jules’s face. 

“Kat,” Jules whispers.  But she does not pull away.  It is like her body remembers, though her mind does not.  

Katharine kisses her ― a reminder.  Their lips move together, and the queen tastes gold on her tongue.  

“Kat!” Jules repeats, louder this time.  When she jerks away, what is left of Katharine’s resolve crumbles.  

“Do you remember nothing?” the queen asks, hot tears rolling down her cheeks.  

Jules raises her hand towards Katharine as if she might grasp her shoulder, but thinks better of it.  “Have you been in the ale? Is that what this is about?” 

Katharine wants to grab Jules by the arms and shake the spell out of her.  To reach between her ribs and prise it out. Suddenly, the gold paint on the queen’s lips tastes bitter as any poison.  “Just go,” she whispers, miserable. “Please, Jules. Just go.”

\--

The next morning, they move around one another while pretending that they are not, walking in wide arcs.  At noon, when Madrigal comes crawling out of Matthew Sandrin’s tent, Katharine is almost grateful for the distraction.  

Just as the priestesses come to escort her to her Quickening stage, Madrigal pulls the queen aside.  “It begins tonight,” she says, pressing a bit of blood-soaked cord into Katharine’s palm. Tucked away in her bodice, it hums with a malevolent energy that even the charm lacked.  As she moves through the valley, she does not hear a single bird singing, starling or otherwise.

But the starlings come when they are called, and Katharine’s dance goes as well as one would expect in comparison to Arsinoe’s  _ Gave Noir _ .  They are quite the sight, one queen with blood-red wine dripping down her chin, the other with birds perched upon her shoulders.  By the time Mirabella takes to her stage, the people are very drunk already, and their cheering does not cease. 

As soon as Mirabella’s braziers are lit, Katharine’s mind flickers to Madrigal at the bent-over tree, passing her silver knife through the fire again and again.  Beneath the fabric of her dress, the cord feels like a brand being pressed to her skin. 

When the elemental queen spins in too wide an arc, kicking hot coals onto her stage, there is hardly time to scream before the flames spread to Arsinoe’s.  They leap across the stages as if of their own accord, lapping orange tongues that would swallow both queens whole. 

Katharine does not want to be the third.  

Her feet carry her through the screaming crowd, past a white-robed priestess who has gone up like kindling.  The starlings follow, still spellbound and shrieking. She does not stop until she reaches the edge of the southern Innisfuil woods.  And even then, she is not really stopping. The queen feels herself being propelled along by an unseen hand ― the mysterious wind from the night of the Hunt.   

Every cut from the knife on Katharine’s body sings with pain, as though she is still on the beach, burning with her sisters.  

The wind pushes her onward, even as she grasps desperately at roots and brambles.  She is being dragged, now. Thorns snag her dress. Her birds are gone. 

These charms and curses are her own, sealed with queensblood.  Madrigal has told her that her low magic is strong, strong enough to kill a queen; only, she did not say which one.  And she had scoffed when Katharine asked if it was true that low magic always circled back to bite, to punish. And Katharine, in her desperation, did not ask her what the consequences of regret would be.  Of throwing a charm into the black heart of the island.

But she will know soon enough. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't freak out. I am obviously not gonna kill em all in part one of a series. But like also, freak out. Whatever, it's fine. Also, I know, I know! But the Breccia Domain is central to Katharine's character, I think, even if her love interest isn't tossing her into it. But like..I love her. Just trust that I love her.

**Author's Note:**

> This work will borrow from the canon events of Three Dark Crowns. There will be minor callbacks to One Dark Throne/The Young Queens, but it pretty much diverges from all of that due to the nature of it and the fact that I started this big ole whopper before either came out. (Obviously! No twin switch means no giftless drama. Just drama of every other kind AND MORE!) I will borrow some events from the first book that I feel are absolutely necessary, like Joseph's banishment and other things that will come up in the next chapter, which deals with the Quickening and the official start of the Ascension Year. After that we're in uncharted territory for real, folks! Almost no canon ships have survived this because again, the twin switch changes literally everything. If you're super attached to any of them, I apologize in advance. (To however many of you there actually are in our little burgeoning fandom.) Some of the later "backstory" might borrow from my other fanfic, Queen Camille, but not to the extent that you need to read it. (Unless you really want to. It's just as gay as this! Gayer even! And has Natalia Arron!) The pairing of Katharine and Jules came to me as if in a dream. If Katharine had been raised a naturalist, Jules would be her protector like she is with Arsinoe--but Katharine (pre-a certain Breccia Domain incident) is so much more meek and sweet than Arsinoe! She would probably fall in love with someone like that, just like she did with Pietyr. I also did it, quite simply, because I can. I hope you enjoy! I'll have chapter two posted before Monday if the Goddess is on my side. After that updates will be less frequent, but probably more on a schedule since I'll be back at school. (think once a week.) Thanks for reading this description which has become nearly as long as the fic itself! :)


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